Sara Tonini is an Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Alicante.

Previously she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at SALDRU (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit), University of Cape Town. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Trento (Italy) and has been a Doctoral Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Cape Town in 2016/17.

During her PhD, Sara visited UN-ECLAC in Santiago de Chile and IZA in Bonn. Sara gained experience in the field, both in West- and in East Africa as a consultant for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Sara’s main areas of interest include labor, development and cultural economics. Her research investigates the formation of trust, its intergenerational transmission and its interplay with socio-economic outcomes, both in developed and developing countries. She is currently working on the impact of diversity on the labour market outcomes in developing countries, and on the effect of education debt on students' performance and wellbeing.

Sarah joined IZA as a Research Afffiliate in March 2017 and became an IZA Research Fellow in December 2023.