Economics at Queen’s

Economics has a long history at Queen’s. Appointed in 1853, the university’s first professor of economics was Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie, famously a proponent of the English Historical School of Economics.

Another of the university’s early economics professors was Hugh Owen Meredith. When Meredith took up his post at Queen’s, the vacancy he left at Cambridge was filled by John Maynard Keynes. Meredith published what is perhaps the first English-language economic history textbook, in 1908.

Economists have worked in various departments and institutes within Queen’s University across the past century. Today most of the university’s economists are based at Queen’s Management School and are part of the Economics Subject Group. Elsewhere, financial economists work in the school’s Finance Subject Group, and environmental economists are based in the Gibson Institute for Land, Food and Environment.

Our Research Areas

Academic staff in the Economics Subject Group work in three main research areas:

• Our economic theory cluster has interests in game theory, networks, social institutions and mechanism design.
• Our applied economics cluster has interests in labour economics, regional economics, development economics, environmental economics, health economics, macroeconomics, economic growth and political economy.
• Our historical economics cluster has interests in business history, demographic history, economic history, financial history, social science history and the history of economic thought.

Meet Our Academic Staff

The Economics Subject Group at Queen’s Management School consists of over 20 full-time academic staff members, conducting researching across the discipline of economics and allied social sciences.

Key Academic Contacts

Subject Group Leader: Professor Rob Gilles
Director of Research: Professor Duncan McVicar

Postgraduate Research

Queen’s Management School hosts an active community of doctoral students in economics and related disciplines. Each student is supervised by at least two members of academic staff.

Prospective students who do not yet have the requisite background in economics to pursue PhD research directly are encouraged to apply for our MSc programme, which embeds core research training skills throughout the degree.

• MSc Economics (1-year)
• PhD Economics (3-years)

Students have been successful in gaining scholarships to fund their tuition fees and living expenses from various studentship schemes, including the ESRC-funded Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Partnership.