Robert Garlick joined the economics department at Duke as an assistant professor in 2014. He previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the World Bank's Development Research Group and holds a PhD in economics and public policy from the University of Michigan. Garlick was born and raised in South Africa, where he studied economics, mathematics and philosophy at the University of Cape Town and managed a small education nonprofit.

Garlick studies education and labor economics in developing countries. He is currently working on peer and network effects in education, determinants of education investments by households, and transitions between education and the labor market. This work spans empirical and methodological topics, and includes primary data collection in and analysis of secondary data from Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.