*This is an in-person event held at Bush House (South East Wing) Room 2.09 at King’s College London, from 4-6pm. Please register here. 

What makes an expert in economics? Are they seen as superior beings in science, policymaking and in civil society? Are they more knowledgeable than the “layman”, and if so, how is that knowledge constructed and disseminated in economics? Is there a detachment between what academic economists do and what the public expects them to offer? But, if we live in the era of post-truth – where objective Truths are under attack -, then why economists still abide to the expert playbook?

In this workshop, Dr Guizzo discusses how cultures of expertise are formed and perpetuated in economics, exploring the code of conduct, intellectual practices, power relations and forms of self-government of academic economists. Starting from Michel Foucault’s contextualisation of the Enlightenment and the “heroisation” of the intellectual as a superior, autonomous individual, she explores how economics was successful in creating technologies of government to maintain its power and status as a science despite recent attempts to “democratise”, “diversify” and “rethink” economics. Dr. Guizzo finishes by exposing the tensions and potential rupture of this model, bringing discussions on the monopoly of truth, the demise of academia and epistemic superiority, and the possibilities for deconstructing traditional expertise under the current political economy of knowledge.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Danielle Guizzo is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Bristol. Her expertise is on History of Economics, Political Economy and Economics Education. She currently works on the following topics:

  • Intellectual communities in economics and the sociology of the economics discipline,
  • Educational policy and economics education,
  • The history of policy-making and economic expertise,
  • Diversity and decolonisation in economics.

She is also a co-founder and steering group member of D-Econ (Diversifying and Decolonising Economics), and an affiliate researcher at Autonomy. Currently she also serve as a Management Committee member at the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) and as a editorial board member of the Journal of Economic Issues (JEI).