Amy Thornton

Amy Thornton is a Senior Researcher at DataFirst at the University of Cape Town. She is also affiliated with SALDRU (the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit). Before this, she was a post-doctoral research fellow at SALDRU and a researcher at the Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU). She is an applied microeconomist working on household survey data in South Africa. Her research covers households, labour markets, gender, and data quality. Right now, most of her current projects are related to data quality and its impact on policy. She has published both single- and co-authored articles in local and international journals. 

Amy completed her PhD in Economics at UCT, supervised by Prof. Martin Wittenberg, and was awarded the 2022 ESSA Founder’s Medal for Best Economics PhD in South Africa. She possesses teaching experience at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and has supervised Masters and Honours students. Amy has also led short courses on data analysis and Stata for diverse audiences including international researchers and government statisticians.