Lecturers and Facilitators 2018
Garth Strachan
Garth Strachan refused to serve in the Apartheid armed forces and spent 18 years in exile working for the African National Congress and its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe in various African states, before returning to South Africa when the ANC was unbanned. He holds a Masters Degree in Public Policy from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He has extensive experience in public sector policy research and development. He also served as a Provincial Minister for Finance and Economic Development in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Garth Strachan is presently the Deputy Director General of the Department of Trade and Industry responsible for Industrial Development.
Stephanie Seguino
Stephanie Seguino is Professor of Economics at the University of Vermont, USA, and Research Scholar at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. Prior to obtaining a Ph.D. from American University, she served as economist in Haiti for several years in the pre- and post-Baby Doc era. Her current research explores the relationship between inequality, growth, and development. A major focus of that work explores the effect of gender equality on macroeconomic outcomes. She has also examined the gender and race effects of contractionary monetary policy. She is an instructor in the African Program for Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE), Associate Editor of Feminist Economics and Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, and a member of the editorial board of Review of Keynesian Economics, as well as past president of the International Association for Feminist Economics. More recently, she was guest editor of a special issue of Feminist Economics on the global economic crisis. She has worked with a wide variety of international organizations and trade unions including the UNDP, UNRISD, World Bank, AFL-CIO, and ITUC.
Nicolas Pons-Vignon
Nicolas Pons-Vignon is a Senior researcher in the School of Economic and Business Sciences (SEBS) at Wits University, South Africa. He is also the Programme director for the Masters in Development Theory and Policy. Nicolas’ research focuses on labour markets, economic policy, and the role of the state in economic development. He co-edited (with Aurelia Segatti) in 2013 a special issue of the Review of African Political Economy (Vol. 40, No. 138) on the political economy of South Africa. He has been the editor of the Global Labour Column since its inception in 2009. Nicolas initiated the African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE) in 2007, which he directed for 7 years before joining the Scientific Committee. Before coming to South Africa in 2004, he worked in Paris at the OECD Development Centre, where he researched violent conflicts in developing countries. Nicolas holds a PhD from EHESS (Paris).
Paul Jourdan
Paul Jourdan is an African integrated development expert specialising in resource-based and spatial development strategies. He has wide experience working on economic growth and development in South Africa, SADC, West and East Africa. He spent 16 years in Mozambique and Zimbabwe during the struggle against apartheid, working as a geologist, geophysicist and minerals economist, before returning to South Africa in 1991. Subsequently, he worked for the ANC and SA government in various positions including ANC Minerals and Energy Policy Coordinator, President of Mintek (research parastatal), and Deputy Director-General in the Department of Trade and Industry. He was a major contributor to the AU “Africa Mining Vision” (2009) and Country Mining Vision (2014). He currently chairs or sits on the board of three economic development agencies, and participates in tertiary education through short lecture series and post-graduate supervision. Most of his recent/current work is as advisor to the SA, other African governments, RECs and NGOs, on resource-based equitable growth and mineral value-chains. He has a BSc (geology), a BA (African government), a PGDip (geophysics), two MScs (mineral economics) and a PhD (politics).
Rasigan Maharajh
Rasigan Maharajh is Nodal Head of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy; the founding Chief Director of the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI) at Tshwane University of Technology; Professor Extraordinaire at the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology at Stellenbosch University; an Associate Research Fellow of the Tellus Institute in Boston; and the Chairperson of the Southern Africa Node of the Millennium Project. Professor Maharajh was previously: Visiting Professor at the Instituto de Economia of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Visiting Research Scholar at the George Perkins Marsh Institute of Clark University, USA; Head of Policy at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research; and National Coordinator of the Science and Technology Policy Transition Project for South Africa’s first democratic government. Before these deployments, Rasigan was Senior Researcher at the Education Policy Unit of the University of Natal; National Coordinator and Researcher at Operation Upgrade of Southern Africa; Research Assistant at the Macro-Education Policy Unit of the University of Durban-Westville; Research Assistant at the Labour and Community Project of the South African Council for Higher Education; and a Casual Labourer at Pick and Pay Supermarkets. During the struggle against the apartheid regime, Rasigan held elected leadership positions within the United Democratic Front, Congress of South African Trade Unions, and the African National Congress. Professor Maharajh holds a PhD from the School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Sweden; he is also an alumnus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and Harvard Business School in the USA. Rasigan is a Ministerial Representative on the Council of Rhodes University and an elected Senator of Tshwane University of Technology. In the past decade, Rasigan has contributed to more than 65 publications, and has presented his research in 37 countries.
Andries du Toit
Andries du Toit has a PhD in Comparative Studies from the University of Essex and is the Director of PLAAS (the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies) at the University of the Western Cape. His training is in political theory and in qualitative and anthropological approaches to social science research. He has done extensive research on the political economy of structural poverty and racialised inequality in a range of contexts in South Africa: his publications include work on the social relations of labour on commercial fruit and wine farms in the Western Cape, on chronic and structural poverty in the rural and urban Western Cape and in the Eastern Cape, and on the dynamics of marginalised livelihoods and informal social protection in the migrant networks of the Eastern and Western Cape. At present, his work focuses on developing a critical understanding of the politics of knowledge production in the government of poverty and marginal livelihoods. His key interest lies in the ways in which development discourse and the production of technical ‘poverty knowledge’ can mystify and obscure the social relations of power that underpin persistent inequality and structural poverty. Here, his concern is to develop approaches and frameworks that can go beyond narrowly positivist and technicist approaches to the politics of use-oriented basic research. In this regard he has focused on developing a critical understanding of discourses around social exclusion and the uses of poverty measurement, and he maintains an ongoing interest in the use of critical social theory in the integration of qualitative and quantitative research approaches to poverty, vulnerability and marginality.
Antonio Andreoni
Antonio Andreoni (PhD Cambridge) is Senior Lecturer in Economics at SOAS, University of London and Research Director of the Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) Research Consortium (DFID). At SOAS Antonio is Principal Investigator for Governing financialisation, innovation and productivity in UK manufacturing (Gatsby Foundation) and for South Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (UNU-WIDER), and also leads the Industrial Development and Policy Research Cluster. Antonio is Visiting Associate Professor of the South African Research Chair in Industrial Development at the University of Johannesburg, member of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD) at Columbia University and of the Babbage Research Group at Cambridge University. Antonio is co-editor of L’Industria. Review of Industrial Economics and Policy and Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. For over a decade Antonio advised international organisations and governments including UNIDO; ILO; UNCTAD; UNDP; UN DESA; UN ECA; World Bank; OECD; BMZ-GIZ; AFD; JICA; Tanzanian Ministry of Industry and Trade; South African Department of Trade and Industry; Finnish Ministry of Economy and Employment; UK Government Office for Science. His research in technological and organisational change, industrial ecosystems, structural and institutional dynamics, and industrial policy has appeared in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Journal of Regions Economy and Society, Energy Policy, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, and Oxford Review of Economic Policy. His publications are available at: https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff95149.php
Christopher Cramer
Christopher Cramer is Professor of the Political Economy of Development at SOAS, University of London, where he has taught since 1996, winning the inaugural Director’s Teaching Prize in 2001. He has chaired the Centre of African Studies in the University of London and is Vice Chair of the Royal African Society and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He has taught at Cambridge, Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, and in South Africa. His research interests range from the political economy of violence, through rural poverty and labour markets, to industrial policy and the ‘industrialisation of freshness’. His prize-winning book, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing: Accounting for Violence in Developing Countries, was published in 2006. Together with colleagues he led a four year study, Fairtrade, Employment and Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia and Uganda (FTEPR): the final report can be found at www.ftepr.org/publications. He has worked as a consultant for a range of organisations, including the World Bank, UNDP, ILO, FAO, EU, DFID, the Ethiopian government, the DTI in South Africa, and Sida (the Swedish International Development Agency). He is a co-editor (with Fantu Cheru and Arkebe Oqubay) of the OUP Handbook on the Ethiopian Economy (2019). He chairs the Scientific Committee of APORDE.
Niki Cattaneo
Niki Cattaneo is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics and Economic History at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, where she has taught since 1990. Prior to that, she was a researcher at the University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research. She is co-course director of APORDE and a member of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Economic Research Advisory Network (ERAN). Her research areas are trade and industrial policy, regional integration and the impact of WTO and regional/bilateral trade agreements on development policy space. She teaches postgraduate courses in trade and industrial policy and econometrics at Rhodes. She has been an examiner for the University of Cape Town’s School of Economics, the Department of Economics and Econometrics at the University of Johannesburg, the School of Economics and Finance at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the CSID at Wits University. She was an editor of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies from 1995 to 2005 and an Associate of the Trade Law Centre in Stellenbosch from 2008 to 2013. She has research linkages with TIPS (Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies) and the Human Sciences Research Council’s BRICS Research Centre. She is also a member of the Geneva-based International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development’s Experts Network. She is a PhD candidate at the School of Economic and Business Sciences at Wits University and holds an MSc in Economics from Rhodes University.
Jonathan Di John
Jonathan Di John is a Senior Lecturer in Political Economy of Development at SOAS, University of London. His research interests include the political economy of industrial policy, taxation and tax reform, conflict and war in mineral abundant economies, and the political economy of governance and growth in oil economies. He was a Research Fellow on the Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics from 2001-2010, and was Acting Director of the Centre in 2009. He has done consultancy work for the World Bank, IMF, OECD, DFID, UNCTAD, UNRISD, and UNDP. He is author of From Windfall to Curse? Oil and Industrialization in Venezuela, 1920 to the Present (Penn State University Press, 2009) and Social Service Delivery in Violence-Affected Countries: Explaining Progress against the Odds (co-authored, World Bank, 2017.). His forthcoming book is Manufacturing Brazil: Political Order and Industrialisation, 1820 to the Present.
Adeyemi Dipeolu
Ambassador Adeyemi Dipeolu is Special Adviser to the President on Economic Matters in the Office of the Vice President of Nigeria. His work and interests have evolved around economic development, trade, industrial policy and economic integration. As Director of the Capacity Development Division of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), he led ECA’s innovative work on Transformative Industrial Policy and also on Conflict and Development in Africa. He was also Member of the Technical Committee and Head of Secretariat of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa. Dr. Dipeolu also served in earlier roles at ECA including as Chief of Staff and also as Coordinator of the African Trade Policy Centre. Prior to this, he was a Nigerian diplomat and served in Geneva, Pretoria, Addis Ababa and Caracas. Dr. Dipeolu studied at the Universities of Ife, Oxford, Cambridge and South Africa and was recipient of several prizes and scholarships.
Ben Fine
Ben Fine is Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and holds honorary positions at the Universities of Johannesburg and Rhodes. He was a contributing co-editor of the MERG Report, and served as an international expert advisor on the Presidential Labour Market Commission. He is co-author with Zavareh Rustomjee of South Africa’s Political Economy: From Minerals-Energy Complex to Industrialisation, 1997. His recent books include as contributing editor, with K. Bayliss, Privatization and Alternative Public Sector Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa: Delivering on Electricity and Water, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008; The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics, edited with Alfredo Saad-Filho and Marco Boffo, 2012, From Political Economy to Economics: Method, the Social and the Historical in the Evolution of Economic Theory, awarded the 2009 Gunnar Myrdal Prize, and From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics: The Shifting Boundaries Between Economics and Other Social Sciences, awarded the 2009 Deutscher Prize, both with Dimitris Milonakis, 2009, Routledge; Marx’s Capital, sixth edition, with Alfredo Saad-Filho, 2016, Theories of Social Capital: Researchers Behaving Badly, 2010; as contributing editor, with K.Bayliss and E. van Waeyenberge, The Political Economy of Development: The World Bank, Neoliberalism and Development Research, 2011; and similarly with J. Saraswati and D. Tavasci, Beyond the Developmental State: Industrial Policy into the 21st Century, 2012, all with Pluto Press; and co-edited with Kyung-Sup Chang and Linda Weiss, Developmental Politics in Transition: The Neoliberal Era and Beyond, Palgrave MacMillan, 2012; and Macroeconomics: A Critical Companion, with O. Dimakou, and Microeconomics: A Critical Companion, both Pluto, 2016. He sat on the Social Science Research Committee of the UK’s Food Standards Agency for a decade for which he chaired the Working Group on Reform of Slaughterhouse Controls. He was in receipt of funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under research, technological development and demonstration grant agreement n° 266800, for research on Financialisation, Economy, Society and Sustainable Development (FESSUD). He is Chair of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy, iippe.org, and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Jayati Ghosh
Jayati Ghosh is Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was educated at Delhi University, JNU and Cambridge University, where she obtained her Ph.D. in 1983. Since 2002 she has been the Executive Secretary of International Development Economics Associates (IDEAS), an international network of heterodox development economists (www.networkideas.org). She is Founding Trustee of the Economic Research Foundation (www.macroscan.org). She received the NordSud Prize for Social Sciences 2010 of the Fondazione Pescarabruzzo, Italy, and was awarded the ILO Decent Work Research Prize for 2010. She was the principal author of the West Bengal Human Development Report 2004 which received the 2005 UNDP Award for excellence in analysis. She has also been chosen for several prizes in India: two from the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, and most recently the Malcolm Adisheshaiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Social Sciences, 2015. She was Conference President of the Indian Society for Labour Economics in 2013 and Co-Chair of the Scientific Committee of the World Social Science Forum in Durban, South Africa in September 2015. Her current research interests include globalisation, international trade and finance, employment patterns in developing countries, macroeconomic policy, issues related to gender and development, and the implications of recent growth in China and India. She has authored several books and more than 160 scholarly articles. Recent books include “Work and wellbeing in the age of finance” (Tulika Books, New Delhi), “The market that failed: Neoliberal economic reforms in India” (Leftword Books, New Delhi), “Never done and poorly paid: Women’s work in globalising India” (Women Unlimited, New Delhi) and “After Crisis: Adjustment, recovery and fragility in East Asia” (Tulika Books, New Delhi), “India and the International Economy”, (edited volume for OUP 2016), the Elgar Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development (volume co-edited with Erik Reinert and Rainer Kattel, Edward Elgar, October 2016) and Demonetisation decoded: A critique of India’s currency experiment (Routledge 2017). She has consulted for a large number of international organisations and is closely involved in working with progressive organisations and social movements.
Faizel Ismail
Faizel Ismail is an Adjunct Professor at the UCT School of Economics, where he teaches a course on “International Trade Bargaining”. He is also an advisor to the South African Department of Trade and Industry on International Trade and Special Envoy on the African Growth and Opportunity Act. He has served as the Ambassador Permanent Representative of South Africa to the WTO (2010-2014). He has a PhD in Politics from Manchester University, UK, on the topic, “An Empirical Analysis of Apartheid South Africa’s Ideas and Practices in the GATT: 1947-1994”. He has an MPhil degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton. He also holds an LLB and a BA degree from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. He led the new democratic South Africa’s trade negotiations with the European Union, SADC, SACU and several other bilateral trading partners including the US, India, and Mercosur since 1994. He has led South Africa’s negotiations in the WTO since 2002 and has served as the Chair of the WTO negotiating group (CTDSS) for two years (2004-2006), the Chair of the WTO Committee on Trade and Development (CTD) regular body for one year (2006/7) and the Chair of the WTO Committee on Trade, Debt and Finance (WGTDF) for two years (2012-2014). He has also served as Chair of the Annual Meeting of the International Trade Centre, based in Geneva. He is the author of two books on the WTO: Mainstreaming Development in the WTO: Developing Countries in the Doha Round (CUTS International, and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2007) and Reforming the World Trade Organization: Developing Countries in the Doha Round (CUTS International, and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2009). He has published numerous articles in international journals and books on economic development and trade and development issues. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of World Trade; Senior Research Associate, Centre for Rising Powers, University of Cambridge; Senior Research Associate, Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester; and a member of the Practitioner’s Advisory Board of the Journal of Global Policy (LSE).
Christian Kabongo
Christian Kabongo is a Project Manager in the Developmental Impact Support Department of the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa (IDC). The Developmental Impact Support Department is responsible for the developmental outcomes of the IDC, namely employment creation, Youth enterprises, Black Industrialist, etc… Christian’s portfolio includes promotion of funding for black industrialists as well as localisation. Christian has been involved with matters pertaining to the African continent for his entire career through APORDE as well as other capacity building programmes. Christian holds a BA in Political and Economic Sciences from the University of Johannesburg and a MBA from the Gordon Institute of Business Science (University of Pretoria).
Mushtaq Khan
Mushtaq H. Khan is Professor of Economics at SOAS, University of London. He is also Chief Executive Director of a multi-country DFID-funded research policy consortium on effective anti-corruption policies in developing countries. His areas of specialisation include institutional economics, industrial policy, the role of the state and rents and rent-seeking in economic development. He is particularly interested in South and South East Asia, but has also done research on the Middle East and Africa. He was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and was a junior research fellow at Oxford, and a fellow and lecturer in Cambridge before taking up his current post at SOAS. His publications are available at http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31246.php
Erika Kraemer-Mbula
Erika is Associate Professor in Economics, working for the South African Research Chair in Industrial Development, School of Economics, University of Johannesburg. Initially trained as an Economist, she holds a Masters in Science and Technology Policy from the Science and Policy Research Unit (University of Sussex), and a doctorate in Development Studies from the University of Oxford. She specialises in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy analysis and innovation systems in connection to equitable and sustainable development. Currently she is a researcher at the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Scientometrics and Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (SciSTIP); as well as Research Associate at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society (CLTS), University of Ottawa; and at the Institute for Economic Research on Innovation (IERI), Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria. Kraemer-Mbula is an active member of several international research networks, including Globelics (Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems), Africalics, PASET (Partnership for Applied Science Engineering and Technology) and the Open African Innovation Research (Open AIR) Partnership.
Neva Seidman Makgetla
Dr Neva Makgetla has been Senior Economist: Trade and Industrial Policy at TIPS (Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies) since 2015. She was Deputy Director General for Economic Policy in South Africa’s Economic Development Department from 2010 to 2014. Before joining EDD, Makgetla worked for the Presidency, the DBSA and COSATU as well as other government departments. Prior to 1994 she worked in various universities in Africa and the United States. Dr Makgetla’s research centres on aspects of industrial policy and value chain analysis, and on socio-economic challenges facing South Africa, especially around employment creation and inequality.
Thandika Mkandawire
Professor Thandika Mkandawire is former Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and the first person to take on the position of Chair in African Development at the London School of Economics (LSE). Prof. Mkandawire was formerly Director of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen and has taught at the Universities of Stockholm and Zimbabwe. He was a holder of the Olof Palme Professorship for Peace with the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm. His research interests are mostly in development theory, economic policy and development and social policy in developing countries and political economy of development in Africa.
Alejandro Nadal
Dr. Alejandro Nadal is full professor at the Centre for Economic Studies of El Colegio de México. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Paris (Nanterre) in 1981. His publications cover a wide variety of subjects, from technical change and resource management, to macroeconomics and general equilibrium theory. He is the author of Rethinking Macroeconomics for Sustainability (Zed Books 2011), a book designed to link the most pressing issues in macroeconomics with the key components of the debate on global sustainability. He was Chair of the Theme on the Environment, Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment (TEMTI) of CEESP-IUCN (2004-2016). He has been on the editorial board of many academic journals, including World Development and the online academic journal Economic Thought of the World Economics Association. Professor Nadal publishes a weekly column in La Jornada, one of Mexico’s national newspapers.
Carlos Oya
Carlos Oya has degrees in Economics from Universidad Complutense of Madrid and SOAS (MSc Econ) where he also did his PhD in Development Economics. He worked for several years in government in Mozambique, where he did extensive field research on rural labour markets and rural poverty. He was also lecturer at the University Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique and is visiting lecturer at Universidad Complutense (Madrid) and at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. His main research interests are: agrarian political economy, political economy of development, development policy, employment, poverty, rural labour markets, development aid, and research methodology. Carlos is now leading two large research projects: one looking at comparative labour conditions and outcomes in Chinese companies in Ethiopia and Angola in construction and manufacturing; and a systematic review of the effects of certification schemes for agricultural production on workers’ and producers’ wellbeing. He is also co-editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change.
Kate Philip
Kate Philip is author of Markets on the Margins: Mineworkers, Enterprise Development and Job Creation. She is a development strategist with over 25 years of experience in policy development and implementation. She is currently a Senior Economic Development Adviser in the Government Technical Advisory Centre (GTAC) in National Treasury, and works for the Cities Support Programme on Township Economies. Through the International Labour Organisation, she has also been supporting the Government of Greece in the rollout of their public employment programme, Kinofelis. From TIPS (Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies), she led a strategy process on inequality and economic marginalisation commissioned by the South African Presidency, and initiated and managed the pilot phase of the Community Work Programme (CWP). She has continued to support it in various capacities since its transfer into government from 2010. Her PhD in Development Studies is from the University of the Witwatersrand.
Nilgün Taş
Nilgün Taş is the Chief of the Industrial Resource Efficiency Division and Deputy Director of the Department of Environment, UNIDO. She also leads UNIDO’s cross-departmental team for circular economy. As a private sector development specialist with over 30 years of experience, Nilgün held various positions as Chief for Competitiveness, Business Environment and Industrial Upgrading Unit, Chairperson of the Gender Mainstreaming Steering Committee, UNIDO Representative in Vietnam and Chief/Senior Technical Advisor for various UNIDO, UNDP, OECD and TIKA projects since 1996. Previously, Nilgün was the Vice President of the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Administration (KOSGEB) in Turkey; a founder and Board Member of the Turkish Credit Guarantee Fund Company (KGF), and a founding team member of the Turkish International Cooperation Agency (TIKA). In her capacity as Projects and Programmes Coordinator of TIKA, she deployed funding for technical assistance projects in the NIS countries and helped set up the OECD Ankara Tax Training and the Istanbul Private Sector Development Centers for training tax officers, government officials and entrepreneurs from the NIS. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering and a Master’s degree in Business Administration.
Fiona Tregenna
Fiona Tregenna holds the DST/NRF South African Research Chair in Industrial Development, and is a Professor of Economics at the University of Johannesburg. She has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge, a Masters degree in Economics from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and earlier degrees from the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal). In the past she has worked for the National Labour and Economic Development Institute, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, universities in South Africa and abroad, and as a consultant to various research institutes and international organisations such as the ILO, UNIDO, UNU-WIDER and UNCTAD. Fiona’s research has been published in journals including Review of Political Economy, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Applied Economics, International Review of Applied Economics, Oxford Development Studies, South African Journal of Economics, Social Indicators Research, Development Southern Africa, European Journal for the History of Economic Thought, Review of African Political Economy and Industrial and Corporate Change, and as a number of book chapters. Her main research interests are on deindustrialisation, structural change, inequality, unemployment and poverty. Fiona has received various research awards and grants and is an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. She serves as a part-time Member of the Competition Tribunal, where she adjudicates competition cases, and on various boards and advisory panels.
Nimrod Zalk
Nimrod Zalk is Industrial Development Policy and Strategy Advisor at the South African Department of Trade and Industry (dti). Prior to this he was Deputy Director-General of the Industrial Development Division (IDD) of the dti. He sits on the board of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC). He holds both an MSc and PhD in Economics from London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He has been responsible for a range of work related to industrial policy including: development and implementation of South Africa’s National Industrial Policy Framework (NIPF) and Industrial Policy Action Plans (IPAPs); design and implementation of key industrial policy initiatives including various sector strategies, industrial financing instruments, and leveraging procurement for industrial development; development of the dti’s sector strategy methodology; and measures to deal with monopolistic behaviour in the South African economy. He has published papers touching on issues such as industrialisation and industrial policy; links between industrial and competition policy; export dynamism; and regional economic integration.
Ha-Joon Chang
Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at the University of Cambridge. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he has published 16 authored books (five co-authored) and 10 edited books. His main books include The Political Economy of Industrial Policy, Kicking Away the Ladder, Bad Samaritans, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, and Economics: The User’s Guide. By the end of 2016, his writings will have been translated and published in 40 languages and 43 countries. Worldwide, his books have sold nearly 2 million copies. He is the winner of the 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize and the 2005 Wassily Leontief Prize. He was ranked no. 9 in the Prospect magazine’s World Thinkers 2014 poll.
Gilad Isaacs
Gilad Isaacs is the coordinator of the National Minimum Wage Research Initiative at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is acting-director of the Corporate Strategy and Industrial Development (CSID) research programme in the School of Economic and Business Sciences at Wits. He holds an MA in Political Economy from New York University and an MSc in Economics from SOAS, University of London, where he is currently completing his PhD. Gilad has a background in political activism and research interests in finance, macroeconomic policy, labour markets and the mineral sector.
José Gabriel Palma
José Gabriel Palma is Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Economics, Cambridge University, where he has taught Econometrics, Macroeconomics, Development and Economic History since 1981. He is also co-editor of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, and a member of four “Task Forces” in Joseph Stiglitz’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University (“Capital Market Liberalisation”, “Macroeconomics for Developing Countries”, “Industrial Policy in Developing Countries”, and “International Policy Rules and National Inequalities: Implications for Global Economic Governance”). His research interests predominantly focus on three areas: the economic history of Latin America, the political economy of recent economic reforms in Latin America and Asia, and why inequality is so unequal across the world (including papers on income distribution, de-industrialisation, the current global financial crisis, financial crises in Latin America and East Asia, capital controls in Chile and Malaysia, trade and industrial policies, and the political economy of economic reforms in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Viet Nam). He has also published on the history of ideas in Development Economics and Politics, especially on radical critiques of the current orthodoxy. He is co-editor of books on Nicholas Kaldor’s and Richard Kahn’s contributions to political economy; he is also co-editor of a book on the 1997 East Asian financial crisis and of a two-volume feschrift for Geoff Harcourt. He is currently writing a book on income inequality (“Do nations just get the inequality they deserve? The ‘Palma Ratio’ re-examined”), an economic history of Latin America since independence, and a book collecting his papers on the political economy of neo-liberal reforms in Latin America and East Asia.
John Sender
John Sender is Emeritus Professor of Economics and Leverhulme Research Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Earlier appointments include: Director of the African Studies Centre, University of Cambridge; Visiting Professor of Political Economy, Witwatersrand University; Senior Research Fellow, African Studies Centre, Leiden; and Advisor to Mandela’s Presidential Commissions on Labour and on Rural Credit. He has acted as a consultant to, among others: United Nations FAO and IFAD (Rome), UNRISD and ILO (Geneva), UNIDO (Vienna) and UNDP (Vietnam); World Bank (Washington); Economic Commission for Africa (Addis Ababa); Federal Government of Nigeria and Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. His publications include: Poverty, Class and Gender in Rural Africa: A Tanzanian Case Study, Routledge (with Sheila Smith); ‘Death Rates, Life Expectancy and China’s Economic Reforms: A Critique of A.K. Sen’, World Development, Vol. 20, No.9 (with Peter Nolan); Making Democracy Work: A Framework for Macroeconomic Policy in South Africa, MERG, 1993 (contributing editor); Restructuring The Labour Market: The South African Challenge, ILO, Geneva, 1996 (with Guy Standing and John Weeks); “Africa’s Economic Performance: Limitations of the Current Consensus”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1999; ‘Rural Poverty and Gender: Analytical Frameworks and Policy Proposals’, in Ha-Joon Chang (ed.), Rethinking Development Economics, Anthem Press, 2003; ‘Quantifying Poverty in Viet Nam: Who Counts?’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 2007 (with J.Pincus); ‘Divorced, Separated and Widowed Female Workers in Rural Mozambique’, Feminist Economics, 2009, (with C.Oya); ‘How to do (and how not to do) fieldwork on Fair Trade and rural poverty’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 35, 1, 2014; ‘Fairtrade cooperatives in Ethiopia and Uganda: uncensored’, Review of African Political Economy, 41(sup1), 2014; ‘Agro-processing, wage employment and export revenue: Opportunities for strategic intervention’, (with C. Cramer), Working Paper for the Department of Trade and Industry, TIPS, November 2015; ‘Backward Capitalism in Rural South Africa: Prospects for Accelerating Accumulation in the Eastern Cape’, Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 16, 1, 2016.