Yana Stainova is a sociocultural anthropologist and an Assistant Professor at McMaster University. She is interested in art, urban poverty, social inequality, migration, and the lived experience of violence in Latin America. Her research explores how people summon music practices to pursue visions of social justice in the face of political turmoil and barriers to immigration. Her first book project entitled Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela studies how young people coming of age in the urban barrios of Caracas use music and stories to push back against the forces of everyday violence, social exclusion, and state repression. Her second book project, tentatively titled The Politics of Joy: Collective Art Practices across the US-Mexico Border focuses on Latinx migration and artistic practices in North America.

A correction: El Sistema was founded in 1975. Hugo Chávez won the Venezuelan election held in 1998 but officially assumed power in 1999.

We are now offering FREE classes through BERGEN GREEN. Our online political economy class just started Wednesday 3/3 (but it’s not too late to sign up!) and is open to all. Check out the full list of offerings here.

Rajeev Dehejia is Professor of Economics and Public Service and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University. He is also the co-director of NYU’s Development Research Institute. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1997. He has been on the faculty of the Department of Economics and The Fletcher School at Tufts University and of the Department of Economics and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and has held visiting positions at Harvard, Princeton, and the London School of Economics.

We are now offering FREE classes through BERGEN GREEN. Our online political economy class just started last Wednesday 3/3 (it’s not too late to sign up!) and is open to all. Check out the full list of offerings here.

Professor Nkechi Madonna Agwu has taught mathematics for over 30 years in Nigeria and the United States. She is a Professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), City University of New York (CUNY). She is a generalist, in that her research, teaching, and scholarship intersects with the sciences, arts, social sciences, and humanities. She is a recipient of a Carnegie Africa Diaspora Fellowship, and the Founder of CHI STEM TOYS Foundation, an NGO geared towards facilitating STEM and entrepreneurship education among under-represented groups of people, particularly girls and women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), and in rural and vulnerable communities in Africa.

We are now offering FREE classes through BERGEN GREEN. Our online political economy class just started last Wednesday 3/3 (it’s not too late to sign up!) and is open to all. Check out the full list of offerings here.

Edward Dickersin Van Wesep is Associate Professor at Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. Professor Dickersin Van Wesep and Brian Waters recently coauthored “The Sky's the Limit: Asset prices can be indeterminate when margin traders are all in.”

Our next book club meeting will take place on April 6th. It will once again be hosted by Fiori Sara Berhane. We will (Zoom) meet at 7pm EST and will be reading The Ministry For The Future. All are welcome!

Thorvaldur Gylfason is Professor of Economics at the University of Iceland. He is also Research Fellow at CESifo (Center for Economic Studies) at the University of Munich, Research Associate at the Center for U.S.-Japan Business and Economic Studies at New York University, and Fellow of the European Economic Association. He has published over 170 papers in international journals and books and over 40 scholarly articles in his native Icelandic, in addition to 20 books, including eight collections of essays in Icelandic and about 900 articles in newspapers and magazines as well as some 90 songs for mixed choir, voice, piano, and other instruments.

In recent years, he has been a frequent Consultant to the International Monetary Fund and also the World Bank, the European Commission, and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

His current research is mostly in the field of economic reforms, constitutions, natural resources, trade, and growth. He was elected to Iceland's Constitutional Assembly in 2010 and appointed by Parliament to a Constitutional Council that drafted and unanimously passed a constitutional bill delivered to Parliament 29 July 2011.

Our next book club meeting will take place on April 6th. It will once again be hosted by Fiori Sara Berhane. We will (Zoom) meet at 7pm EST and will be reading The Ministry For The Future. All are welcome!

Grace A Musila is an associate professor in the Department of African Literature at Wits University, Johannesburg. She is the author of A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour: Kenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder, which explores Kenyan and British interpretations of the 1988 murder of British tourist Julie Ann Ward in Maasai Mara Game Reserve, Kenya. She also coedited Rethinking Eastern African Intellectual Landscapes with James Ogude and Dina Ligaga. She has written articles and book chapters on eastern and southern African literatures and popular cultures. In this interview we discuss her book Wangari Maathai's Registers of Freedom.

Our next book club meeting will take place on April 6th. It will once again be hosted by Fiori Sara Berhane. We will (Zoom) meet at 7pm EST and will be reading The Ministry For The Future. All are welcome!

Marco Ranaldi is a postdoctoral scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His research interests lie at the intersection between economic inequality and political economy, with a focus on inequality measurement and the comparative analysis of economic systems. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Paris School of Economics.

Our next book club meeting will take place on April 6th. It will once again be hosted by Fiori Sara Berhane. We will (Zoom) meet at 7pm EST and will be reading The Ministry For The Future. All are welcome!

Music by Podington Bear

We speak with Toby about Bergen Green.

Sign up today for classes (or to volunteer)

Felipe Valencia Caicedo is an Assistant Professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. Prior to that, he worked at the Department of Economics at Bonn University. Felipe obtained his Ph.D. in Economics cum laude from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in 2015, through the European Doctoral Programme. He worked as a Consultant at the World Bank in Washington, DC, from 2008 to 2010 and an Analyst at Goldman Sachs in 2005. His primary research interests are in Development Economics, Economic History and Economic Growth, with an emphasis on Latin America.

Ruins of French hospital in Muang Khoun Laos, former capital of Xieng Khuang province, destroyed by US bombing in the late 1960s. June 2009.

Gianluca Russo is a postdoctoral fellow at Pompeu Fabra University. He holds a PhD in Economics from Boston University. His research interests lie at the intersection of political economy, development economics and economic history.

Benito Mussolini

HAVE SOME THOUGHTS OR SUGGESTIONS? WE WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU! 

You can contact us at [email protected]