Sharon Barnhardt is the Director and Principal Investigator for Economics and Public Policy at CESS Nuffield-FLAME University in Pune, India. She is also an Affiliated Professor at J-PAL South Asia.

Her research interests include development, labor, social, and urban economics. Her current research focuses on behavior change in health, sanitation and policing in India. Her earlier research used natural experiments from Indian housing programs for low-income groups to study how neighbor identity and residential relocation affect networks, attitudes, and/or cooperation.

Sharon has a B.S. from New York University, an M.P.A. from Princeton, and a Ph.D. from Harvard.

She joined IZA as a Research Affiliate in July 2010 and became a Research Fellow in July 2017.