Profile for

Udaya Wagle, Ph.D.

Professor of Public Administration

Dr. Udaya R. Wagle is Professor of Public Administration at East Texas A&M University. His research focuses on poverty and inequality, social policy, migration and remittances, and comparative political economy. His scholarly works include Multidimensional Poverty Measurement (2008), The Heterogeneity Link of the Welfare State and Redistribution (2013), Research Handbook on Poverty and Inequality (2023, edited), and Labor Migration and Poverty in a Turbulent Era (forthcoming 2027, edited). He has also authored and coauthored dozens of academic and professional publications. His international research and policy work includes assignments in Myanmar, Nepal, and Uzbekistan. Before joining East Texas A&M, Dr. Wagle taught at Northern Arizona University, Western Michigan University, Marist College, and the University of Massachusetts Boston.

A Conversation with Dr. Wagle

What draws you to your work?

I am keenly interested in understanding public policy problems clearly and comprehensively before seeking solutions to them. Public problems are rarely as simple as they first appear, and effective policy requires careful attention to their causes, contexts and consequences. My work seeks to bring rigorous research and evidence to that process so that proposed solutions respond to the problems they are actually intended to address.

What do you like most about East Texas A&M University?

East Texas A&M offers comprehensive opportunities for academic, research, service and community engagement. I particularly value the ability to work across a wide range of traditional disciplines while also developing interdisciplinary collaborations around complex private, public and societal problems. The university's connections to communities across Northeast Texas and the Dallas–Fort Worth region create additional opportunities to connect academic work with the needs of the private sector as well as those of the public service.

What courses or subjects are you most interested in teaching?

My teaching interests include political economy, public policy, public finance, social policy, social entrepreneurship and research methods and analytics. Across these areas, I am especially interested in helping students develop the analytical skills needed to understand complex public problems, evaluate evidence and apply what they learn to real-world policy and management challenges.

What are you currently researching?

My current research follows two complementary strands. Internationally, I study labor migration, including the constraints shaping migration decisions and the consequences of migration and remittances for workers and their families. In the United States, I am interested in how immigration affects the economic and community resilience of localities, including how communities respond and adapt to demographic and socioeconomic changes.

What would you like students and others to know about you?

My international background and experiences working across different academic, policy and cultural settings have deeply shaped how I approach teaching and research. They have strengthened my intercultural competence and reinforced a longstanding commitment to understanding how the needs, experiences and perspectives of socioeconomically vulnerable populations can be properly reflected in public policies. Ultimately, that quest is grounded in a broader concern with how public policy can improve opportunities and quality of life for everyone.