Adeel Malik

I am Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, and an Associate Professor of development economics at Oxford University (Oxford Department of International Development). I am also a Senior Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, and a Research Fellow in Economics at St Peter’s College, Oxford. In 2024, I served as a Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University’s King Centre on Global Development. I hold a DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford, which I completed as a Rhodes Scholar.

In terms of academic research, my primary area of interest is the political economy of development, with a particular focus on Muslim societies. I adopt an empirically rigorous, historically informed, and policy-relevant approach to address the big questions in political economy. My work combines the latest methods in causal identification with hand-collected data on firms, political families, and religious institutions. My recent research revolves around the following curiosities: how the relationship between religion, land, and politics shapes contemporary development outcomes in Muslim societies; how autocracies formulate their trade policies in the face of exogenous pressures to liberalize; how the introduction of irrigation technologies has influenced rural inequality; and how historically embedded institutional arrangements in frontier regions influence conflict against the state. 

A second major strand of my research focuses on the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), using a holistic and multi-disciplinary approach. Key themes explored as part of this emerging research agenda include the relationship between business and politics, as well as the role of oil, geo-politics, and global integration in shaping MENA political economy. I am the co-editor of Crony Capitalism in the Middle East published by Oxford University Press in 2019, and the author of 'The Economics of the Arab Spring', which was translated into Arabic, Italian, and several other languages and formed the basis for a dedicated feature in The Economist magazine.

Together, these disparate research strands aim to develop a deeper and more systematic understanding of the political economy of authoritarian rule in Muslim societies.

I have published in reputed academic journals, such as the Journal of European Economic Association, European Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Development Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, World Development, Review of International Political Economy, Journal of Historical Political Economy, Journal of Democracy, and Modern Asian Studies, among others.

My research has been featured in CNN, Fortune Magazine, The Times London, Financial Times, and Gulf News. I strongly believe in the role of the public intellectual. In that spirit, I have engaged with a wider audience by occasionally contributing op-ed pieces to The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, Huffington Post, and Foreign Policy Magazine. I am also a regular contributor and columnist at the Project Syndicate.

Beyond teaching and research, I am the co-founder and Academic Lead of the Oxford Pakistan Programme (OPP), which supports talented students from Pakistan to pursue graduate studies at Oxford University. I am also a Senior Associate of the Cairo-based Economic Research Forum, Senior Fellow of the Policy Initiative in Beirut, Research Fellow of CERP in Lahore, a Faculty Fellow of the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS), and Advisory Board Member of TIDE, Oxford. I have also previously held visiting research appointments at the University of Paris-Nantere (2018) and Harvard University (2001).