Pedro Conceição has served as Director of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office since January 2019. Previously at UNDP, he was Director for Strategic Policy, Chief Economist for Africa, and Director of the Office of Development Studies. His work spans financing for development, inequality, global public goods, and the economics of innovation and technological change.
He is the lead author of the Human Development Reports for 2019, 2020, 2021/22, 2023/24, and 2025. As part of the lead-up to the 2026 Report, he co-authored a perspective in Nature (June 2025) titled “An aspirational approach to planetary futures,” outlining pathways to human progress within planetary boundaries.
Before joining UNDP, Pedro taught at Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon. He holds degrees in physics from Instituto Superior Técnico, in economics from ISEG (Lisbon School of Economics and Management), and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied on a Fulbright scholarship.