Helene Purcell is a PhD candidate in Economics at Fordham University and expects to graduate in May 2021. Her research aims to make contributions to the areas of development economics, environmental economics, and human capital accumulation using applied econometric techniques that facilitate causal interpretation. Her main research interest lies in exploring the impact of natural disasters and climate change on individual preferences and behavioral factors, paying close attention to causal inference and attempts to quantify the impact of a volatile environmental landscape on individual behavior and economic outcomes.  She has accepted a postdoctoral research position at the University of Pennsylvania in the Population Studies Center analyzing the impacts of living through the HIV epidemic in Malawi