We're celebrating another inaugural lecture today and welcome the fantastic Professor Lucy Barnes. Lucy has made a career out of breaking new ground in the field of Political Economy. 

Economic policy clearly matters to us all. The view that the state of the economy is the primary driver of election results is often taken as a given. But we can only understand the implications of that if we understand how people actually view the economy. Do people look to their own good or to the good of society as a whole? Do they look forwards or backwards? What do they think ‘good’ means in this context in the first place?

Watch Lucy's inaugural lecture on Youtube: https://youtu.be/hfK8Qd85-xM

Mentioned in this episode:

• Barnes, L. and Hicks, T. (2022) ‘Are Policy Analogies Persuasive? The Household Budget Analogy and Public Support for Austerity’, British Journal of Political Science, 52(3), pp. 1296–1314.
• Barnes, L. (2021) ‘Taxing the Rich: Public Preferences and Public Understanding’, Journal of European Public Policy, 29(5), pp. 787–804.

UCL’s Department of Political Science and School of Public Policy offers a uniquely stimulating environment for the study of all fields of politics, including international relations, political theory, human rights, public policy-making and administration. The Department is recognised for its world-class research and policy impact, ranking among the top departments in the UK on both the 2021 Research Excellence Framework and the latest Guardian rankings.