Francesca Fabbri is Head of Delivery Support at the Department for Education, working on further education policies (and previously school workforce and teachers' workload). Before then she was senior economist at the National Infrastructure Commission, HM Treasury, and Principal Analyst at the Implementation Unit of the UK Cabinet Office. Before she joined the British Civil Service, Francesca worked as assistant professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Munich and as Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia London.

She received her PhD in Economics from University College London. Her thesis is on "Immigrants' Performance, Welfare and Reception: An Economic Analysis for the UK". Her main research interest is in applied labor economics, focusing on immigration, education, labor demand, and personnel economics.
While working on her PhD, she participated in research for the British Home Office on the labor market performance of immigrants and the impact of migration on local labor markets in the UK. She has published in the Economic Journal and the Journal of the European Economic Association.

She is also a research affiliate at CESIfo, Munich.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in August 2004.