Current Visiting Scholars
Josh Banerjee
Josh is an economic historian with a particular focus on macroeconomic history. He undertook a PhD in Economic History at the London School of Economics and defended his doctoral thesis in 2023 titled "From Bretton Woods to the Great Moderation: Essays on British Post-War Macroeconomic History". His interest in the history of both economics and econometrics is driven by a desire to understand more about the genesis of key ideas within the discipline; the men and women who pioneered them, and the ways in which diverging worldviews and philosophical outlooks have shaped the development of the subject. Whilst in residence as a Visiting Scholar, Josh will conduct research into the evolving theoretical views of the late British Keynesian economist and Nobel Laureate, Professor James Meade, focusing on his response to the crisis of Keynesianism in the 1970s, and the radically new (but very much overlooked) approach he developed to try and revive the fortunes of the British economy.
Juliette Blayac
I'm currently a PhD student at the Triangle laboratory in Lyon, under the supervision of Rebeca Gomez Betancourt and Claude Diebolt. My work focuses on the Home Economics movement, a women's movement of the early 20th century that pioneered, among other things, consumer economics. I'm interested in the influence of thrift culture on Home Economics. In particular, I'm working on the cost-of-living studies of Jessica Peixotto, a Berkeley social economist linked to the movement. In addition, I'm going to carry out a textual analysis of the Journal of Home Economics for the first half of the 20th century.
Brendan Brundage
I am currently a fourth year PhD student in Economics at Colorado State University. I was born and raised in South Florida, and my passion for economics began with learning the history of economic thought in my undergraduate years at Rollins College. My research is centered around International Economics, Economics of Race, and History of Economic Thought. My dissertation is in the works and the topic is Modern Caribbean Development. I believe the Caribbean has been under-researched and although they share many similarities with Central and South America, the region is unique in its history, culture, and its nature as small island economies. I will be using my time at the HOPE Center to develop a chapter on Arthur Bloomfield’s role in Caribbean development. Bloomfield spent time in the British West Indies during a wave of independence and has been known for advising developing countries in their construction of central banks. This period was booming with Caribbean intellectuals, and I hope to explore any possible connections with Arthur Lewis, Eric Williams, Lloyd Best, and others.
Matilde Ciolli
Matilde Ciolli completed her PhD in History of Political Thought in September 2022 (within a double-degree program at the University of Milan and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris), with a dissertation titled: «The Conservative Moment of Neoliberalism. Family, Community and Tradition between Europe and Americas». In 2022, thanks to a summer grant funded by the History and Political Economy Project, she studied the origins of neoliberal doctrine in Argentina, its reception and adaptation by Argentine intellectuals, and the dissemination of Hayek's thought under dictatorial regimes. Since October 2022 Matilde has been a post-doc fellow at the Luigi Einaudi Foundation in Turin, where she conducted research on Friedrich A. Von Hayek and his «reinvention» of the Scottish Enlightenment tradition. For the past four years Matilde has actively participated in the Groupe d'études sur le néolibéralisme et les alternatives, founded by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval. During her period as a HOPE Visiting Scholar she will investigate the circulation of Hayek's doctrine between the late 1940s and the 1980s in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Guatemala, and the appropriation and reformulation of his thought by local intellectuals to address the specific social, economic and political problems of their countries.
Till Duppe
I'm a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal. My main research interest is the historical epistemology of economics, inspired by phenomenological philosophy.
Rafael Lazega
I first studied various social sciences during my bachelor’s degree in political science at the University of Lausanne, and my master’s degree in economics, majoring in economic policy, at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Focusing on the history of economic thought in my Master’s dissertation, I was able to explore the interactions between these disciplines through research into the place of economic theory in value judgment in the thinking of Ronald Coase and Richard Posner. In my PhD with the Walras Pareto Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Economic and Political Thought at the University of Lausanne, I'm currently deepening my research into Chicago economics. The aim is to focus on the relationship between epistemology, the conception of human nature and ethics, in the thoughts of Frank Knight and Ronald Coase, and to show why and how these two authors oppose the role of theory defended by other Chicago economists. The Visiting Scholar program gives me the opportunity to engage in excellent collaborations related to this research.
Soroush Marouzi
I’m a doctoral candidate in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto, where I’m due to complete all requirements by the end of Fall 2023. My doctoral research focuses on what it is to act in a rational way in an uncertain world. I draw on the pragmatist tradition to elucidate what rational habitual actions are and what epistemic capacities they involve. My areas of research include the history of economic and philosophical thought (esp. the early interwar period in Britain), action theory, and epistemology. My future research branches from my doctoral work. During my period at the HOPE center I will study how certain economists of the early twentieth century developed their accounts of economic action and economic rationality as a result of their engagement with a distinct inter-disciplinary tradition in the history of ideas known as “anti-intellectualism,” the tradition on which the typical sources of motivation in human action are non-intellectual elements such as instincts and habits.
Nestor Lovera Nieto
I am originally from Caracas, Venezuela – also known as “the city of red roofs” – I moved to France in 2016 to pursue my postgraduate education. In 2018, I earned my M.A. in Economics at Université Lumière Lyon 2. In 2022, I obtained a double doctoral degree, a Doctorate in Economics from Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, and a Ph.D. in Management from Neoma Business School. In my dissertation, I combined the philosophy of economics and the history of economic thought to show that economists cannot dispense with value judgments in studying normative economics. Currently, I am an Economics Lecturer at Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne. I will return to the HOPE Center this summer as a Visiting Scholar.
Yam Maayan
I obtained my Ph.D. in the Economics department at Tel Aviv University, specializing in the history and methodology of economics. My doctoral research focused on investigating how rational decision under uncertainty models were implemented within neoclassical economics, exploring the methodological and conceptual shifts they have created in normative concepts. During my studies, I was a doctoral fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at TAU and a visiting fellow at the Center for the Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences at LSE. In addition to my research, I have a keen interest in the pedagogy of economics and the relationship between methodological perceptions and teaching approaches. As a visiting fellow at CHOPE, my current focus lies on the work of mathematical economist Kenneth Arrow. My research revolves around Arrow's conceptualization of the social realm, with a specific emphasis on his contributions made after the 1970s. I am particularly interested in exploring the relationship between his abstract mathematical work and his practical involvement in concrete policy consultation.