Program Director, Ponlok Chomnes, Cambodia

2018 Asia Foundation Development Fellow



Dolgion Aldar is a research professional promoting evidence-based policymaking, spanning governance, institution-building, social inequality, and social cohesion.

She joined The Asia Foundation in Cambodia as program director for Ponlok Chomnes II: Data and Dialogue for Development in August 2023. She is responsible for overseeing program management and leading program implementation.

Before joining the Foundation, Dolgion served as a Socio-Economic expert at UNDP in Timor-Leste, where she led the UN–Government joint nationwide Covid-19 socioeconomic impact assessment surveys and provided social inclusion advisory work for climate resilient livelihoods and infrastructure projects. She is the lead writer for Timor-Leste’s second Voluntary National Review of the Sustainable Development Goals, working closely with the National Agency of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Prime Minister’s office.

Before this role, Dolgion spent five years as CEO of the Independent Research Institute of Mongolia (IRIM), one of the prominent organizations that promotes independent and third-party research in Mongolia. Under her leadership, IRIM was recognized as Mongolia’s leading non-government policy research institute in 2015. For her commitment to evidence-based policymaking in Mongolia, she was chosen as an Asia Foundation Development Fellow in 2018.

Dolgion currently serves as a secretary of the Research Committee on Social Indicators of the International Sociological Association and is a member of the Social Well-Being Research Consortium in Asia. Previously, Dolgion was a board member and secretary-treasurer of the Asia-Pacific Evaluation Association. She is also the co-editor of Democratic Struggles in Challenging Times: Insights from Mongolia around the World, published in 2021.

Education: Dolgion holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Manchester, UK, and both a master’s and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the National University of Mongolia.