James Robinson on the Origins of the Industrial Revolution

James Robinson is an economist and political scientist. He is currently the Reverend Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies and University Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. Robinson has conducted influential research in the field of political and economic development and the factors that are the root causes of conflict. His work explores the underlying relationship between poverty and the institutions of a society and how institutions emerge out of political conflicts.

Robinson has a particular interest in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. He is widely recognized as the co-author of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, with Daron Acemoglu, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT. Translated into 32 languages since its publication in 2012, the book offers a unique historic exploration of why some countries have flourished economically while others have fallen into poverty. He has also written and coauthored numerous books and articles, including the acclaimed Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (also with Acemoglu).

Portrait of Henry VIII by Joos van Cleve

Portrait of Henry VIII by Joos van Cleve

Cory Doctorow on Monopolies

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger -- the editor of Pluralistic and the author of young adult novels like LITTLE BROTHER and HOMELAND and novels for adults like ATTACK SURFACE and WALKAWAY, as well as nonfiction books like HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

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Tabari Bomani, Bill Stroud and Bob Lubetsky on Rethinking Education

Tabari Bomani is the principal at Nelson Mandela School for Social Justice in Brooklyn. William (Bill) Stroud was the founding principal of two New York City public schools and is an instructional leader and trainer. Bob Lubetsky is Clinical Professor in Educational Leadership at The City College of New York.

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Camila Vergara on the Constitutional Convention in Chile

Camila Vergara is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights. Her research combines a critical interpretation of modern and contemporary political thought, grounded on the material organization of power, and a normative political theory guided by a radical republican critique of procedural theories of justice. By focusing on the relation between inequality, corruption, and domination, her work is an economically engaged political philosophy that examines issues of political legitimacy and popular authority within different conceptions of liberty and the organizations of power they promote.

Her forthcoming book, Systemic Corruption. Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic, theorizes the crisis of democracy from a structural point of view, arguing that representative governments suffer from systemic corruption, a form of political decay that should be understood as the oligarchization of society’s political and legal structures.

Prior to the Holder Initiative, she was a lecturer in political theory at New York University, and on constitutional law at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies. She also served as press attaché for Chile at the United Nations and worked as a journalist for several media outlets in Chile. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, with a special minor in constitutional law; an MA in Politics from the New School for Social Research, with a focus on theories of constituent power and authority; and an MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from New York University (Fulbright Scholar), with an expertise on the constituent populist revolutions in Latin America during the first decade of the 21st century.

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Rick Rowden on the History and Future of the Washington Consensus

Rick Rowden is Senior Economist at Global Financial Integrity and Lecturer in the School of International Service at American University. He completed his PhD on India-Africa economic relations in the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi. His academic areas of specialization are International Relations (IR), International Political Economy (IPE) and development economics, and he has expertise in the long-term national economic development strategies of developing countries and the emerging field of South-South economic relations. Currently he is an Adjunct Professorial Lecturer in the School of International Service (SIS) at American University and a senior economist at the Washington DC-based research NGO, Global Financial Integrity (GFI). Previously, he has worked for international development NGOs, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, and has lectured in Global Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) and in Political Science at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He has served as a consultant to many international development NGOs and UN agencies, including the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the World Health Organization (WHO). He is the author of “India-Africa Economic Relations in the 21st Century: Emerging Connections in South-South Economics” (Routledge, forthcoming in 2021).

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Pritish Behuria on The Opportunism of Global Development Discourses

Pritish Behuria is a Lecturer in Politics, Governance & Development at The University of Manchester. Pritish Behuria’s research operates at the intersection of development studies, comparative politics and international political economy. He is a political economist, trained in classical and heterodox political economy. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying the challenges associated with late development under 21st Century Globalisation. He completed his PhD in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London (2015).

Photo by Tim Shepherd on Unsplash

Photo by Tim Shepherd on Unsplash

Basil Oberholzer on Development Without Currency Crisis (Is it possible? Yes!)

Basil Oberholzer is an economist with an emphasis on macroeconomics and monetary systems, an area he extensively researched on during his Ph.D. in macroeconomics and monetary policy at the University of Fribourg. His research has led him to publications in the areas of macroeconomics, development economics and ecological economics. He is currently working as an economist at the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment where he manages projects on topics such as ecosystem services, cost of inaction and policy evaluation.

He was a member of parliament at Canton St. Gallen in Switzerland where he was involved in environmental and social initiatives.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

Divya Kirti and Dalya Elmalt on the Limits of Sustainable Investing

Dalya Elmalt is a Research Officer in the IMF Research Department. Previously, she worked at NYU Stern School of Business as a Junior Research Scientist. Her research interests include public economics, and corporate and climate finance. She holds an MA in Economics from the University of Chicago.

Divya Kirti is an Economist in the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. His research interests include financial intermediation, macrofinance, and corporate finance. His work has been published in the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and covered by media outlets such as the New York Times.

Photo by Mark Finn on Unsplash

Photo by Mark Finn on Unsplash

Stefanie K. Dunning on Black to Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture

Stefanie K. Dunning is associate professor of English at Miami University of Ohio. She is author of Queer in Black and White: Interraciality, Same Sex Desire, and Contemporary African American Culture. Her work has been published in African American Review, MELUS, Signs, and several other journals and anthologies. She sometimes publishes under the pen name Zeffie Gaines.

Listen to her podcast: Black to Nature

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