EDI welcomes our inaugural OSUN partner institution affiliated faculty. EDI is leading a series of collaborative workshops with OSUN faculty to develop a series of Network Collaborative Courses, research activities with OSUN affiliated faculty, and the development of a Certificate in Public Policy.
Jeannette Alden Estruth is Assistant Professor of American History at Bard College, and a Faculty Associate at the Harvard Law School Berkman- Klein Center for Internet and Society. She is currently working on her book manuscript, The New Utopia: A Political History of the Silicon Valley, which explores the history of social movements, the technology industry, and economic culture in the United States. Estruth received her doctorate in History, with honors, from New York University in 2018. In 2019, her book project was a finalist for the Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History. Her research has been supported by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Huntington Library, the University of Virginia Miller Center, and the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. She has contributed articles to the Washington Post, Public Seminar, Spotlight, Nichons-Nous Dans L’Internet, Business Insider, and Enterprise and Society, among others. Prior to her doctoral work, Estruth worked in editorial for Harvard University Press and the Radical History Review.
Irwin Collier joined the Bard College Berlin economics department beginning in the Fall Semester of 2018. Previously he was professor of Economics and North American Studies at the John-F.-Kennedy Institute of Freie Universität Berlin. Before coming to Freie Universität in 1994, Irwin Collier taught at the University of Houston for thirteen years. He has also taught as a visiting professor at CERGE/EI in Prague and Seoul National University’s School of Public Administration in South Korea. Over his teaching career Irwin Collier has taught a broad spectrum of courses including macroeconomics, international economics, social policy, labor economics, econometrics, comparative economic systems, and history of economics. Irwin Collier studied economics at Yale University and earned his doctorate in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before coming to Bard College Berlin his research work focused on aspects of the economy and the economic policies of the former German Democratic Republic and the transition of the postwall East German economy as well as the theory and statistical methods of measuring purchasing power in an international context. Over the past few years he has conducted significant archival work dealing with the evolution of the curricula for undergraduate and graduate education in economics from the late 19th century up through the 1960s in the United States.
Jimena Hurtado is Full Professor at the Department of Economics, Universidad de los Andes, working on the history of economic thought in the XVIIIth century, the philosophy of economics, and political and moral philosophy. Products from this research, on the thought of Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jeremy Bentham, and Alexis de Tocqueville, have been published in several scholarly outlets, and inform teaching focused in the history of economic thought for undergraduate students, civic education and general education courses with a strong component of political and moral philosophy. Jimena has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Paris X and is co-editor of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought, a publication of the History of Economics Society.
Sameh Hallaq is an assistant professor in the economics program at Al-Quds Bard College, Al-Quds University. He serves as an assistant vice president of finance and administration. Dr. Hallaq is a Research Associate at Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, New York (USA). He has obtained his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Wuppertal, Germany, in 2019. His research focuses on the effect of conflict on human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes.
Asel Kyrgyzbaeva is an assistant professor in the Economics Department of the American University of Central Asia. She holds a master’s degree in Economics from Indiana University, studied at Academy of Management of Kyrgyz Republic and graduated with honors from International University of Kyrgyzstan, B.A. in Economics. Currently she is working on her PhD on regional economic cooperation for the Kyrgyz Republic. Asel has served as AUCA Registrar for four years (2011 - 2015) and has been an active member of AUCA community being a member of Academic Senate and numerous academic policy committees. From March 2018 till March 2021 she served as a member of the Board of Directors of Bakai Bank. Since April 2021 she is a member of the Board of Directors of Commercial bank Kyrgyzstan.
Sobhi Samour is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Al-Quds University, Bard College for Arts and Sciences in Jerusalem (AQB). He chairs the Economics and Finance Program, as well as the newly launched Social Thought, Economy, and Policy Program. Sobhi has a Ph.D. in economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). In 2017, he was the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Fellow and postdoctoral research scholar at the Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia University, where he worked on a comparative political economy of indigenous labor under settler colonialism. His main teaching and research interests include comparative economic development, political economy, economic history and the Palestinian economy. He has published on Palestinian trade policy reform, Palestinian labor in Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s neoliberal economic policy reforms. He has also worked as a consultant and researcher for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the United Nations Development Program in Timor-Leste, and the Palestinian Economic Policy Research Institute.
EDI welcomes our inaugural EDI Student Fellows. We offer both paid and unpaid opportunities for OSUN students.
Ashley is a member of the Bard College Class of 2022. She studies Environmental and Urban Studies with a focus area of Economics, Policy, and Global Development. Her Senior Project critically examines the persistence of inequality in Johannesburg, South Africa during the post-Apartheid era as a product of neoliberal restructuring and globalization. Ashley is particularly interested in how imaginative economic policies may be leveraged as a pathway to social change and more equitable and inclusive futures. Ashley was named Bard College’s Richard D. and Nancy M. Griffiths Scholar in 2019, and the Milners “Canadian” Scholar in 2020. In 2022, Ashley was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for her project “Community Science as Community Agency.” Through the Watson Fellowship, she will spend a year abroad in South Africa, Brazil, Australia and Ireland engaging with participatory science projects.
Billie is a rising junior at Bard College majoring in economics and is pursuing the Levy Institute’s 3+2 accelerated M.S. program in economic theory and policy. Her focus is international finance and heterodox approaches to creating equitable public programs. She works as an economics tutor at Bard and serves as co-chair of the student-led think tank Project for Policy Innovation. In her spare time, you can find her raising ducks and geese in the mountains of Vermont
Tyler Emerson, raised in Lyndonville, Vermont, is a senior in the economics department at Bard College. Prior to his time at Bard, he was a double major in economics and piano performance at SUNY Purchase College and Conservatory of Music from 2015 to 2017. During this time he was active in the Purchase Student Government Association as coordinator of Freenew, a zero-waste initiative to extend the life-cycle of dorm necessities. After experiencing disability first hand, Tyler spoke with Vermont’s Speaker of the House at a press conference and testified before the Vermont legislature on behalf of Paid Family and Medical Leave in 2018. Tyler received the Bard College Economics Program's Adolf Sturmthal Memorial Prize for “outstanding work in the field of economics” in May 2021. He is currently conducting senior project research on the link between unemployment and disability. To determine the potential impact of a federal job guarantee program on this population, his research will include IRB approved interviews and surveys of people with disabilities.
Eli is a Cambodian-American, rising-junior at Bard College majoring in economics and intends to enroll in the M.S. program in economic theory and policy at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. He looks to study heterodox economics and use his knowledge and research to promote full-employment and functional finance. Additionally, Eli was named Bard College’s latest Amicus Foundation Scholar, an endowed scholarship awarded annually to a qualified and deserving student in the field of economics.
Fiona Miller is a rising-junior and Political Studies major at Bard College, focusing on American Politics and Political Theory. She has lived in Chicago for her entire life, and attributes her interest in solving political, economic, and social issues to her lived experience of growing up in the city. Fiona has served as a staging location director and campaign intern for Representative Antonio Delgado’s re-election campaign, helping to ensure his victory in a very close race. She has made the honor list every semester at Bard, and intends to attend law school after graduation.
Tomas is a rising senior at Bard College majoring in Sociology, with specific focuses in environmental studies, law, and public policy. His academic and activist work has centered around identifying leverage points and innovative policy reforms through which the invaluable power of the federal government can better address the intertwined crisis of climate change, economic inequality, and environmental injustice. He believes that direct public employment in the environmental realm, combined with explicitly anti-racist environmental regulatory reform, will play a key role. Tomas's forthcoming Senior Project (May 2022) will take the form of a sociological analysis of environmental justice jurisprudence in New York and the U.S. more broadly.
Prior to Bard, Tomas graduated from The Putney School in 2017, also attending Ipswich High School and École alsacienne in Paris. He has been involved in local environmental civics in the Hudson Valley and in his hometown of Ipswich, Massachusetts, and helped develop a human ecology program at the Centre for Imagination at the Woodstock School in Mussoorie, India in 2018. Tomas is also a musician, horticulturist, and mountaineer.