I am a DPhil (PhD) candidate at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford, in the Department of International Development. I research how public and private stakeholders can finance, build and operate infrastructure assets that better serve economies and societies.
My PhD research explores how infrastructure — such as roads, power plants and broadband networks — affects economic opportunity in emerging economies. I focus on two mechanisms: labour market integration and access to domestic, regional and global markets.
A previous iteration of my research scope focused on emerging post-conflict economies, so I have a particular interest in the role of infrastructure there.
Beyond my PhD, I am keen on understanding what we talk about when we talk about the housing crisis, how we can improve everyday life in Athens, as well as the energy-related opportunities and challenges of data centres for middle-income economies such as Greece.
The question of what becomes scarce in an era of AI-powered abundance preoccupies me a lot. I’m working on a few projects that help me unpack my thoughts on this more clearly.
I currently also do various interesting stuff for 1830 lab, a company that produces useful research for innovative Greek businesses. I have previously worked in policy-making and policy analysis in Athens, Brussels and Paris, and maintain an interest in Greek politics. I studied Law at the LSE.
I also enjoy photography. I’m particularly intrigued by the heterogenous relationships between people and the public space.
You can find me between London, Oxford and Athens. Do say hi at vasiliki.poula [at] st-hughs.ox.ac.uk
My PhD research explores how infrastructure — such as roads, power plants and broadband networks — affects economic opportunity in emerging economies. I focus on two mechanisms: labour market integration and access to domestic, regional and global markets.
I’m supervised by John Gledhill and Tom Scott-Smith and I’m generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust, the Onassis Foundation and the A. G. Leventis Foundation.
I draw on political economy to better understand questions of power and the shifting boundary between the state and the market; economic geography to better understand how infrastructure reorganises space, linking or bypassing places, and workers and firms within; institutional anthropology to better understand how organisations work in practice, how actors’ stated logics are negotiated and where intentions and outcomes diverge.
My research has three main objectives:
I develop a framework for understanding how different actors participate in the lifecycle of infrastructure assets, from planning, de-risking and financing to construction, operation and governance. These include domestic public authorities; financial institutions, including bilateral and multilateral development banks; bilateral and multilateral donor agencies; and domestic and foreign companies, both private and state-owned. I examine the different logics that guide these actors, and how these translate into stated intentions, decisions and, ultimately, outcomes pertaining to economic opportunity.
Why I find this interestingTo move beyond the conventional state-as-provider, citizen-as-user model and account for the diverse actors involved in shaping infrastructure.
To contribute to debates on the financialisation of infrastructure. The shift away from predominantly state-led infrastructure provision has generated a literature that often oscillates between critical accounts of the growing influence of financial actors and more managerial perspectives on their contribution to effective infrastructure provision. Much of this debate remains at a relatively abstract level. I seek to bring the debate closer to the ground by examining the concrete decisions, relationships and practices through which financial actors become involved in infrastructure provision.
I develop a framework on two key mechanisms through which infrastructure shapes economic opportunity: labour market integration and access to domestic, regional and global markets. In doing so, I examine how the involvement of different actors, guided by converging and competing logics, shapes the impact of infrastructure.
Why I find this interestingTo unpack an often-assumed relationship. The relationship between infrastructure and economic development is frequently taken for granted, with infrastructure understood as an enabler of economic activity. I am interested in understanding how this relationship actually works in multi-stakeholder emerging economies: through which mechanisms infrastructure creates economic opportunities, and under what conditions connectivity translates into economic value.
To explore the distributive effects of infrastructure, beyond its conventional treatment as a neutral enabler of economic activity. Examining the mechanisms through which infrastructure facilitates economic activity also makes it possible to understand how it shapes the distribution of economic opportunities. Decisions about what gets built, where, by whom and how have important distributive consequences: they shape who can access new opportunities, capture economic value and benefit from improved connectivity. I am particularly interested in how infrastructure can create new opportunities while also reproducing existing inequalities.
To understand the relationship between the material and immaterial dimensions of infrastructure. Infrastructure consists of tangible, geographically fixed assets, but its effects extend far beyond the assets themselves. It enables flows of people, goods, capital and information, and creates or reshapes economic relationships across places. I am interested in how something physically fixed can generate effects that are mobile, relational and geographically far-reaching.
Drawing on 12 months of fieldwork in Kosovo, textual analysis and 80+ interviews, I trace how domestic and international actors become involved in selected infrastructure projects. I examine how institutional logics shape decisions across the project lifecycle, and how those decisions affect economic opportunities.
Why I find this interestingBecause Kosovo is very distinctive.
Firstly, Kosovo brings together, in one small country, a wider range of actors than is usually present in emerging economies, e.g. EU, UN agencies, World Bank, EBRD, EIB, US Millennium Challenge Corporation. This range reflects Kosovo’s post-conflict state-building trajectory and its contested international status. It is not a member of the United Nations and is not recognised by a number of states, most notably Serbia.
Secondly, Kosovo sits within a geopolitical tension that many emerging economies face, but rarely so sharply. Its strategic ambition is EU membership. The EU is its largest trading partner and its main source of financial assistance, and that assistance depends on reforms and on normalisation of relations with Serbia. At the same time, Kosovo has a particularly close relationship with the United States, which played a defining role in its independence, security and state-building. The two partners do not always pull in the same direction, and both have used their leverage.
Third, Kosovo holds what is often cited as the fifth-largest proven reserves of lignite in the world. More than 90% of its electricity comes from two ageing lignite plants, making it one of the most coal-dependent electricity systems in Europe. This has long made infrastructure a high-stakes matter in Kosovo. Decisions about energy are bound up with sovereignty and security, with the industrial legacy of the Yugoslav period, and with national pride in the country’s natural resources. In many emerging economies, these political and symbolic dimensions of infrastructure stay in the background. In Kosovo they are unusually visible.
Because Kosovo is also very typical.
Kosovo’s distinctive features make it a strong single case, but it also shares key structural features with many other emerging economies, so the findings should travel beyond it. Its population is young, with an average age of just under 35 at the 2024 census, the second-youngest in Europe. Many Kosovars have emigrated, and remittances were equivalent to about 12.8% of GDP in 2024. At home, labour remains largely untapped: the employment rate was 38.6% in 2024, and female labour force participation is below 20%, the lowest in Europe and the fifth-lowest in the world. Growth relies heavily on consumption and imports, with goods exports covering only about 14% of imports in 2025. Access to finance is also limited: Kosovo received its first sovereign credit rating only in 2024, and at BB- it is below investment grade.
I’ve written a report about housing in Greece, exploring what are the key problems and what are some solutions based on this diagnosis. I summarised the main findings for Kathimerini.
I generally support solutions that involve the market in order to increase the supply of affordable housing units. More on this on WIRED Greece.
I’ve written a report about the energy-related opportunities and challenges of data centres for Greece. I wrote about a few key findings for Kathimerini and WIRED Greece, and had talked about this at a documentary on ERT. A relevant article on Oxford Political Review.
In collaboration with Astylab, I wrote Plan A, advocating for ten proposals for driving important change in Athens, the kind of proposals we can maybe all agree on. I talked about it in an interview with Athens Voice.
I co-founded, alongside Theoni Androulidaki, limen, an initiative about culture and the city and especially, about how we can use vacant spaces in Athens for cultural events. We started off as an Instagram archive of good practices, and went on to organise a photography exhibition in a vacant office space in collaboration with Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Municipality of Athens and Greece in USA. We also put together a research trip to Dexamenes.
I’m also interested in the relationship between Athens and the sea — it always shocks me how thin it is, more on this on Kahf Magazine.
An earlier iteration of my PhD research focused on post-conflict economies, and on how infrastructure is planned, financed and contested in places that are rebuilding. I’ve written about infrastructure projects by peacekeeping missions on Paprika! Magazine by the Yale School of Architecture and Yale School of Art.
When AI-powered on-demand abundance comes with a promise of eliminating friction and imperfection, it is unpredictability and tension that become valuable. I’ve grown increasingly interested in how we can maintain access to spaces where there’s still a place for accident and error. I worked with Stathis Kalyvas on how the Greek tourism industry can leverage this, by a model of ‘summering in the village’. That is, not a perfect, frictionless break from life (as holidays often promise) but an opportunity to do life, with its ups and downs, albeit differently. A report, an article and a short documentary based on our fieldwork in a village of Chios are all forthcoming.
How this plays out in the Cycladic islands also interests me. This is why I’m co-editing a book in the kyklàda.press series, looking at ‘overstaying’, i.e. how some structures hollow out the normal rhythm of everyday life on the Cyclades.
The promise of eliminating friction also entails an elimination of iteration, incremental improvement and processual building. When everything is fast, slow becomes valuable — which is why I’ve taken up some occasional (and a bit messy) writing on Substack.
I’m part of the Board of the Greek Politics Specialist Group (GPSG) of the UK’s Political Studies Association and had the pleasure to edit their year-in-review pamphlet for 2024.
I’m also involved with (Greece-related) events at the European Studies Centre at Oxford. Most recently, I moderated the book launch of Greece’s Comeback: Restoring Economic Credibility after Crisis by Alex Patelis.
I mainly photograph spaces and the people in them. Some of my photographs have appeared on The Isis Magazine.