I am a Reader in Economics at Queen's University Belfast, director of the Health and Human Development Initiative (HHDI), an affiliate of the Queen's University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH) and Centre for Economics, Policy and History (CEPH), and a fellow of the Institute of Labour Economics (IZA) and Global Labor Organization (GLO).
My main research interests focus on modern development economics, with broad applications to labor, political economy, education, gender and family, and I am more than happy to supervise PhD students with an interest in these fields.
Topics on which I have been working include:
Long-Run Economic Development and Persistence
Fertility and Gender Norms
Ethnicity and Development in Africa
Slavery and Disenfranchisement in the US
Institutions and Economic Growth
Organised Crime
Political Economy
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"democracy is not an enemy of quality
it is quality to be an enemy of democracy"