Jonathan Arentoft (SOAS), Henry Leveson-Gower (Promoting Economic Pluralism), Ben Glover (Demos) and Sophie Van Huellen (SOAS)

Mainstream Economics dominates all sectors of our society from academia to the job industry. The event seeks to understand the institutional and structural arrangements that allow orthodox Economics to protract its dominance in modern societies. We will be looking particularly at three channels through which this is possible. The first one is academia and it's relationship with the government in terms of various funding mechanisms. Secondly how educational institutions interact with the job market, for example how the demands of prospect employers discourage professors from designing a pluralist curriculum (and whether this is a myth.). Lastly, our speakers assess the symbolic value of the Nobel Prize, which almost exclusively awards research that fits into the Mainstream Economic Theory. To end on a positive note, our panel will consider strategies for change given this broad analysis.

Speaker biographies:

Jonathan Arentoft is a student of international relations and economics at SOAS, and is a society member of the Open Economics Forum, which is part of an international network of student groups which promote the pluralisation and democratisation of economics.

Henry-Leveson Gower has been a practicing economist and policy analyst for almost 25 years. Henry is an internationally recognised expert in water policy and regulation but he also has knowledge of a wide range of environmental policy areas including sustainable consumption and production, climate change adaptation, industrial pollution and waste. He is also the founder and CEO of Promoting Economic Pluralism, which is seeking to create space for different frames, narratives and perspectives on the economy to gain legitimacy within academia, policy and public dialogues.

Ben Glover is researcher at the think-tank Demos. Prior to joining Demos, he worked as a parliamentary researcher for a Labour MP. Before that, he was a policy adviser on the civil service fast stream, working in several government departments in Whitehall on policy areas including digital taxation, prison reform and rail travel. Here, he and with two co-workers set-up Exploring Economics, which has been pushing for more pluralism and diversity of approaches within the Government Economic Service.

Sophie van Huellen is a Lecturer in Economics at SOAS University of London. She teaches undergraduate and post graduate modules in international finance and advanced econometrics. Her research interests are in quantitative methods beyond econometrics including machine learning and big data. She is further interested in financial markets, financialisation, (agricultural) commodity markets, and global value chains. At SOAS, she is an active memeber of the Food, Nutrition and Health in Development Research Cluster and the Research Cluster on Industrial Development and Policy.

Organiser: The event was organised by OEF the (Open Economics Forum) and SOAS Department of Economics

Speaker: Hannah Bargawi (SOAS), Jonathan Arentoft (SOAS), Henry Leveson-Gower (Promoting Economic Pluralism), Ben Glover (Demos) and Sophie Van Huellen (SOAS)

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcasts

This podcast has been edited and section have been shortened.