The department is a lively community that is recognised internationally as one of the top centres for research and teaching in development studies.
Adeel Malik is a development macroeconomist with a strong multi-disciplinary orientation. His research engages with questions of long-run development, political economy and economic history, with a special focus on Muslim societies. His work combines quantitative and qualitative research methods. Apart from engaging with cross-country empirics on development, he is trying to develop a broader research lens on the political economy of the Middle East. His most recent contribution to the field was an article on 'The Economics of the Arab Spring', which received the Best Paper Award. It has now been translated into Arabic and several other languages, and formed the basis for a dedicated story in The Economist magazine. Another emerging area of interest is the interplay between religion, land and politics in Pakistan, which he is exploring as part of an IFPRI-funded project on structural constraints to public goods provision in Punjab.
He also holds the Globe Fellowship in the Economies of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, and is a Research Associate of the Centre for the Study of African Economies and the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource-Rich Economies, both based at the Department of Economics. He co-directs the ERF Project on the Political Economy of Private Sector Dynamism in the Middle East, and serves as an associate editor of the Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Middle East Economics and Finance).
Before joining ODID, he completed his doctorate in economics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004. His previous research affiliations include: the Department of Economics, Oxford University (2004-05); Merton College (2002-03 and 2005-06); Center for International Development, Harvard University (2001), and Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre, Islamabad (1997-1999).
His research on the Middle East’s political economy has featured in CNN, Fortune Magazine, The Times London, Financial Times, and Gulf News. He strongly believes in the role of the public intellectual. In that spirit, he has engaged with a wider audience by occasionally contributing op-ed pieces to The New York Times, Project Syndicate, Al-Jazeera, Huffington Post, and Foreign Policy Magazine.
