prof.dr. IP (Irene) van Staveren

Biography

Irene van Staveren (1963) is professor of pluralist development economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Professor van Staveren's theoretical interest is in a wide variety of economic theories, including feminist economics, social economics, institutional economics, the capability approach and post-Keynesian economics. Her key research interest is at the meso level of the economy with topics such as social cohesion, social exclusion, inequality and discrimination, social norms, as well as ethics and values in the economy and in economics. She is project leader of the online database Indices of Social Development. In addition, van Staveren is member of the think tank Sustainable Finance Lab and columnist for the Dutch newspaper Trouw. She published in 2015 a pluralist economics textbook with Routledge, titled Economics after the Crisis - an introduction to economics from a pluralist and global perspective. She turned this book into a mooc (massive open online course) on the platform Coursera, and it has achieved over 70,000 learners worldwide: Introduction to Economic Theories. More recently (in 2021), she published an accessible overview of the insights of ten almost forgotten economists outside the mainstream: Alternative Ideas from Ten (Almost) Forgotten Economists.