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King’s People

Biography

Dr Robyn Klingler-Vidra is a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy. Prior to joining the Department of International Development, she was a Lecturer in the Department of European and International Studies, also at King's College London. She was concurrently the Head of Policy Research at the Coller Institute of Venture at Tel Aviv University from 2013-2016.

She spent eight years in the financial sector, working as a financial institutions' liability underwriter, a research manager at an expert network firm and an investor relations manager at a hedge fund. Her public sector experience includes internships with the Economic Section of the US State Department Foreign Service and in the Westminster office of a UK Member of Parliament.

Robyn led the World Economic Forum’s annual UK Executive Opinion Survey on global competitiveness from 2009 to 2018 and since 2011, has been Senior Programme Adviser for LSE Enterprise, where she designs and delivers courses on capital markets, political economy, economic competitiveness and innovation. She obtained her BA in Political Science at the University of Michigan and her MSc and PhD in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics.

Research

Robyn’s research focuses on government efforts to build venture capital markets as a means to promote innovation, economic growth, and development.

She is currently engaged in five major research projects:

  1. investigating why and how the Silicon Valley venture capital policy model is adapted as it diffuses, with particular emphasis on the forms venture capital policies take in East Asia. Robyn has been researching this since 2010.
  2. investigating East Asian governments' shift from supporting state-owned enterprises and conglomerates, to SMEs and start-ups in the post-East Asian Financial Crisis.
  3. exploring how the educational backgrounds of East Asian innovation policymakers are shaping the focus of national entrepreneurship promotion policies. 
  4. developing a framework for assessing the 'external rate of return' of business activity across economic and social parameters.
  5. continuing to explore venture capital and private equity, across the themes above, as a source of patient capital for innovation and development.

Teaching

PhD supervision

Robyn is interested in supervising PhD projects focused on topics closely-aligned with her areas of research.

Further details

See Robyn's research profile