The Economy Studies Team

Sam de Muijnck (Director)

Sam works on the Economy Studies teaching packs, building and strengthening networks, and giving workshops and talks. He also writes policy briefs and reports. Together with Joris, he wrote the report Thinking like an economist? (2018) and the book Economy Studies (2021). He also has experience from the Ministry of Finance and graduated in 2020 with an interdisciplinary research master’s degree in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. Besides his economics activities, he is a hip-hop artist and breakdance teacher.

Joris Tieleman (Chief Economist)

Joris works on Economy Studies workshops, lesson plans for high school economics education and a new framework for professional business education. Together with Sam, he wrote the report Thinking like an economist? (2018) and the book Economy Studies (2021). Previously, he wrote his PhD on urban growth in West Africa (cum laude) for the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He also worked as a staff research journalist for the Volkskrant, and co-founded the Dutch branch of Rethinking Economics.

Kristin Dilani Nadarajah (Teaching Material Developer)

Kristin Dilani develops teaching materials for Economy Studies. She has previously taught at Charles University. She has a (pluralist) master’s from EPOG (Economic POlicies in the age of Globalisation) and a bachelor’s in Economics from the University of York. Over the last years she has been active in various civil society and activist organisations and is currently a board member of Attac Norway. When she is not working she likes to cook, crochet, and knit to unwind.

Jamie Barker (Economics Education Consultant)

Jamie coordinates workshops and provides support for academics, to help departments and educators to change the way that economics is taught. He graduated from the Economics and Social Sciences MSc at Università Bocconi (Italy) in 2021 and the Economics with Econometrics BSc at University of Exeter (UK) in 2018. He has recently started a part-time PhD on the wellbeing economy at the University of Glasgow. Previously, he spent three years working at the Bank of England, initially as a research assistant and later as an international economic analyst. Outside of work he enjoys playing korfball and board games.

Clara Dallaire-Fortier

At Economy Studies, Clara creates teaching materials. She is also a doctoral researcher and teacher at the Department of Economic History at Lund University, Sweden. Clara believes that research should go beyond the university walls. For her, the democratisation and education of economics are vital pillars of civil participation toward sustainable futures. When she creates teaching materials, her aim is to offer intellectual tools to help students face the current economic issues. Clara is an alumnus of Paris Sorbonne Cité, France (MA), the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (MCom), and McGill University, Canada (BA). She is also part of multiple academic societies, one by being a board member of the European Society for Ecological Economics.

J.Christopher Proctor

J.Christopher is a PhD student at the University of Technology of Compiègne and at Roma Tre University. He is studying the macroeconomics of the energy transition, with an emphasis on applying Post-Keynesian and Ecological economics to climate-economy models. At Economy Studies he works on the teaching materials team. He has been rethinking economics for a long time now, and was on the team that created the Rethinking Economics: An introduction to Pluralist Economics book. He likes sports, board games, and anything with long and complicated rules.

Lukas Salecker

Lukas studied Liberal Arts and Sciences and Development Studies in The Hague, Cairo and Oxford. He’s passionate about the transformation toward a just and ecological economy as well as people-powered politics based on random selection and deliberation.  He’s done research on alternative poverty measures and post-growth politics. Throughout and after his studies, he worked in international development cooperation and in political consulting, supported the European election campaign of a transnational political party and organised a participatory deliberation process. In his free time, he enjoys running, playing football and savouring the Mexican cuisine.

Sally Svenlen

I am 23 years old and from Stockholm, Sweden. I graduated last year with an undergraduate degree in Economics from Durham University, UK where I co-founded the Durham Society for Economic Pluralism and got involved in Rethinking Economics. Currently I live in London and work as an Economist in the UK Government Economic Service. Besides economics I love going on really dangerous hikes and play music.

My favorite economists? I am very fond of the work of Elinor Ostrom, Samuel Bowles and Karl Polanyi (although I guess he was more of an economic anthropologist).

I really hope this book can contribute with some needed, concrete suggestions to how an alternative economics degree could look like, inspire some economics departments who are looking for new ideas, or ignite debates among those who are yet not convinced.

Charlotte Cator

I’m Charlotte, not officially part of Rethinking Economics but have been a fan since I learned about it in the Netherlands. I’m 25, live in Copenhagen, and recently finished my Master’s in Business Administration and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School (after doing my Bachelor’s in Philosophy and Economics at the University of Amsterdam).

I am very bad at picking favourites, but I think my favourite economists at the moment are Thomas Sedlacek, Dani Rodrik and Kate Raworth, and my favourite philosopher Hannah Arendt.

I hope that this book provides the tools for the much-needed transition to economics education that acknowledges economics as a rich social science that is connected to and situated in other spheres and aspects of human life. I think a sound conception of economics is needed for a sustainable society and this starts with educating the economists of the future in an open-minded and responsible way.

Ryan Berelowitz

Rethinking Economics Netherlands, 20 years old, undergraduate student majoring in economics and politics at University College Utrecht, study in the Netherlands but from South Africa, and I am an aspiring but still amateur DJ.

My favourite economists is Steve Keen or Larry Randall Wray. Currently I read a lot of stuff on MMT and Post-Keynesian economics.

I hope the book can be used to show mainstream academic departments that we are serious about what we say and that we have clear ideas.

 Jamie Barker

I’m 24, from the UK, and currently finishing up a master’s degree in Economics and Social Sciences at Universita Bocconi in Milan, Italy, although I will (hopefully) have graduated by the time that the book is published. I’m a part of Rethinking Economics Bocconi Students at the moment, but by the time the book comes out I’ll have a volunteer role with the overall RE network.

My favourite economist at the moment is Ernst Schumacher, I love how direct he is about the problems facing both economics as a discipline and the economy itself.

I’m super excited about the book, it’s really difficult to convince academics to change the way that the teach economics, and having such a comprehensive resource to support them to do that will help so much!

Kristin Dilani Nadarajah

Rethinking Economics Norway, 25 years old, Oslo, Norway, soon to be an EPOG economics master’s student.

My favorite economist is Karl Polanyi for his very interdisciplinary and holistic analysis of the market economy.

I believe the problems of systemic inequality, injustice, climate change, and exploitation are in place partly due to the way economics is being taught. I hope this book can help teachers to provide a more pluralistic economics education for future economists with better tools to comprehend reality and better how we tackle some of these issues.

J.Christopher Proctor

28 years old, Dallas, Texas, and Turin, Italy, Trustee of Rethinking Economics and Curriculum Research Manager at oikos International

Favorite economic idea: Baumol’s cost disease.

I hope this book will remind students and teachers of what they thought “economics” was before they learned too much economics.

Sebastián Muena Cortés

Red de Estudios Nueva Economía, Rethinking Economics Chile – DeAmerica Soy, 23 years old, undergraduate economics student at the University of Chile, Santiago de Chile,

Ricardo Ffrench-Davis is my favourite economist.

I hope that this book will be a manual who can use complementary to neoclassical formation on Samuelson, Mankiw, etc. in the universities.

Tree Watson

I work at Rethinking Economics International (based in Manchester) and was formerly part of Post-Crash Economics at Manchester.

27 years old, Manchester, UK, Co-Director of Rethinking Economics International Team.

I hope this book will remove the last stumbling block for Economics departments everywhere. The teachers are out there, the materials are out there, and now a step by step guide to building a curriculum! There is no excuse not to teach Economics in a pluralist, critical and relevant way.

Henri Schneider

Board member of the Netzwerk Plurale Ökonomik in Germany since 2018. Until September 2019 I´ve studied Economics (BSc) in Lueneburg (small city near Hamburg). I will start my master in Economics at the University of Greenwich in September 2020.

My favorite economist and hobbies? Very good question! I´d go for Kate Raworth as my favorite Economist and my Hobbies are Kickboxing and the BBC Planet Earth documentations haha.

This book is what we, as a movement for pluralism and curriculum change, really need. After criticising the economics education for more than a decade it is now time to go the next step and use our expertise for creating a new way of learning about the economy and global challenges.

Rita Guimarães

Rethinking Economics University Institute of Lisbon (RE-ISCTE), 23 years old, MSc Economics, Lisbon Portugal

Hopefully, this book will inspire students, professors and academics to widen their understanding of the scope of Economics, the shapes it can take, and the potential it has to help shaping our society.

Maria Georgouli Loupi

Critique – Rethinking Economics Athens, 26 years old, currently in the UK/originally from Greece, BSc Economics (Minor HR)/MRes Economic & Social History, favourite hobby: reading Tithi Bhattacharya’s searing commentary on news relevant to social reproduction.

I hope this book will demonstrate we can, in fact, teach economics differently and give new economists about to teach for the first time some much-needed pluralist tools.

Merve Burnazoglu

Rethinking Economics Netherlands, 31 years old, PhD candidate and lecturer at the Utrecht School of Economics, Netherlands

I hope this book will provide a bold but constructive statement of how economics programs are and should be.

Clara Etchenique

Rethinking Economics Rotterdam, 21 years old, 3th year undergraduate economics student at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands

I hope this book will become the new tool-box of the pluralist economics education!

Oliver Hanney

I am a part of the Rethinking Economics Society at Warwick University in the United Kingdom and I am a twenty year old undergraduate entering my final year of studies.

The need for a change in how Economics is taught is becoming more and more clear and I hope that this book can help Professors transition easily into teaching the pluralist, multidisciplinary course which is needed now more than ever.

Vera Veltman

Rethinking Economics Rotterdam, 25 years old, 3th year bachelor student in Economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands.

I hope this book can make students and those who are interested feel that they have acquired a more diverse tool and mindset to tackle social issues on a daily basis.

Anne Kervers

Rethinking Economics Netherlands, PhD candidate in New Normative Framework for Financial Debt at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

My favorite economists are Kate Raworth and Marianna Mazzucato.

My hope is that through this book economists of the 21st century will learn about the normative principles in different economic theories and their distributive consequences.