Queen’s Business School, in partnership with Trinity College Dublin’s Department of Economics, has secured 3.8 million Euros in funding to establish the ground-breaking All-Ireland Centre of Excellence in Economics, History and Policy. Bringing together existing strengths in the fields of economics and history on the island of Ireland, the Centre will be co-located at Queen’s University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin.

The All-Ireland Centre of Excellence in Economics, History and Policy will play a leading role in contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, by combining economics with history to address global challenges, building a durable research and teaching infrastructure, and engaging in outreach activities. The proposed Centre has three pillars:

• Frontier Research: researchers at the Centre will use historical events to understand the historical drivers of contemporary economic trends and institutions on the island and across the globe.

• Capacity Building: the digitization, collection and analysis of historical data will provide vital services to other disciplines, and train new generations of researchers in a multidisciplinary setting.

• Policy and Dissemination: drawing on a rich historical record, the Centre will provide crucial context to modern-day decision makers in government, business, and NGOs.

Understanding the deep historical roots of major challenges like global inequalities and climate change can help policymakers to address their consequences. Taking history seriously will significantly enrich the study of economics and help to deliver policy outputs relevant to meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The Centre will provide training to new generations of economic historians: from offering internship opportunities for undergraduate students, to doctoral training and postdoctoral experience for early career researchers, to a series of outreach activities in secondary schools for pupils across the island.

Associate Professor Gaia Narciso, Head of the Department of Economics at Trinity College Dublin and Co-Director of the new All-Ireland Centre, says:

”We are excited about starting this new four-year project that builds on the existing strengths of our two universities. This injection of high-quality funding from the North-South Research Programme will enable us to expand our activities with ambitious new policy-relevant research and education programmes across the island of Ireland.”

 Dr Chris Colvin, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Queen’s Business School and one of the Centre’s new Programme Leads, says:

“The past holds many lessons on successes and mistakes in policymaking decisions that could benefit society both today and in the future. The new All-Ireland Centre of Excellence in Economics, History and Policy will offer those in leadership positions the resources to improve decision-making - by providing concrete, expert historical research evidence in a formal setting. We look forward to working collaboratively with Trinity College Dublin to combine our knowledge to benefit the whole island of Ireland.”

Plans to launch the Centre in September 2022 are already underway. Queen’s Business School and the Department of Economics at Trinity College Dublin will begin to advertise a series of high-quality academic and policy posts in the coming months.

The grant is awarded under the first funding call of the North-South Research Programme, a collaborative scheme funded through the Government of Ireland’s Shared Island Fund.