Professor Abreu is a regional economist, working on local and regional development, labour markets, education and skills, migration, and productivity. She is Professor of Economic Geography at the Department of Land Economy, and Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. She was a Co-I and the lead on skills for the ESRC-funded Productivity Insights Network (PIN). Prior to coming to Cambridge she worked for the Poverty Team at the World Bank office in Jakarta, Indonesia, on policy initiatives to support child nutrition and educational transitions. She was also a policy research fellow at the Cambridge-MIT Institute, working on several projects related to knowledge diffusion and innovation. She has worked as a consultant for the European Commission, the World Bank, the UK’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS/BEIS), the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), and the Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) of Northern Ireland.