INFORMATION & UPDATES UPDATES & INFORMATION People


IN MEMORIAM Sir James Mirrlees


Sir James Mirrlees, Scottish economist and Nobel prizewinner, died on 29 August. He has been a figure of enormous importance both for the magnitude of his influence on the field of public policy analysis in general and more particularly for his role in the Institute for Fiscal Policy’s (IFS) recent activities. His work in microeconomics is world-renowned. During the 1960s and 1970s he worked on the theory of public economic policy which would eventually earn him the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1996 for his pathbreaking work on the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information. His economic models, looking at ‘moral hazard’ and ‘optimal income taxation’, are standards taught in the discipline.


All of his work was motivated by a commitment to economic policy design as an instrument to the betterment of society. While his insights into fundamental theory have been unsurpassed, he has contributed also to practical advice on policy, notably through his role in chairing the Mirrlees Review – a major collaborative research venture led by the IFS. The Mirrlees Review brought together a high-profile group of international experts and early career researchers to identify the characteristics of a good tax system for any open developed economy in the 21st century.


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Professor Geoff Whitty CBE Geoff Whitty, economist and professor for equity in education died on 27 July. Over a long career, Professor Whitty held the prestigious Karl Mannheim Chair of Sociology of Education and was Director of the Institute of Education from 2000 to 2010. He directed ESRC-funded projects on the impact of education policies, such as the assisted places scheme, city technology colleges and changes in initial teacher education. More recently he held a Research Professorship at Bath Spa University and a Global Innovation Chair at the University of Newcastle in Australia. He had an international reputation


38 SOCIETY NOW AUTUMN 2018


for research and scholarship in the fields of education policy and teacher education. ioelondonblog. wordpress.com/2018/07/29/geoff-whitty-an- appreciation/


OU RESEARCHERS AWARDED FOR IMPACT ON SOCIETY Research which investigated how wearable monitoring technologies can contribute towards supporting active and healthy ageing, has won The Outstanding Impact of Research and Prosperity category in the OU Research Excellence Awards 2018. The award was presented to Professor Shailey Minocha, OU Professor of Learning Technologies and Social Computing and her team. The research programme was funded by the Sir Halley Stewart Trust and the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account. Professor Minocha and her team investigated whether, and how, wearable activity monitoring technologies can support active and healthy ageing, in self-monitoring and self-management of health, in alleviating social isolation and loneliness, and in caring. Examples of activity monitoring technologies tested include those from Samsung, Fitbit and Garmin. These devices help track activity, heart rate and sleep patterns.


SMART HANDPUMPS TEAM WINS INNOVATION AWARD The Smart Handpumps initiative has won Oxford University’s first Vice-Chancellor’s Innovation Awards. Jointly funded by the ESRC and DFID, the initiative is an innovative technological response to water shortages and handpump service maintenance issues in Africa. Led by Professor Robert Hope,


Associate Professor at the School of Geography and the Environment, a multi-disciplinary team of academics created and installed an electronic device in the handpump’s handle, which automatically alerts maintenance providers when remote sites are damaged or broken. The innovation has made an


important contribution to solving one of the major problems preventing safe access to water in many African


countries. It led to improved maintenance of handpumps, reducing repair time from a month to a day in some cases, and allowing teams to know quickly if these repairs have been effective.


WILEY PRIZE IN ECONOMICS AWARDED TO ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MIRKO DRACA Associate Professor Mirko Draca was named by the British Academy and Wiley as the winner of this year’s prize for his academic excellence in the field of economic history, especially for his work on the effect of Chinese imports. Nominations can be for research


in any field of economics or economic history, and are made by Heads of Department of Economics (or equivalent) in UK HEIs. Mirko said: I’d like to thank the groups that have provided a really inspirational environment for me over the years: the Department of Economics and CAGE research centre at Warwick, the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE, and the UCL Department of Economics. These groups have all made massive contributions to social science and public policy in the UK. In an era when the value of independent expertise is being aggressively challenged this type of research is more important than ever.”


QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY HONOURS 2018 A number of prominent social scientists and economists have been honoured in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours list.


Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) Paul Johnson, Director, Institute for Fiscal Studies. For services to the Social Sciences and Economics. Professor Jonathan Haskel, Professor of Economics, Imperial College London. For services to Economics.


Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)


Professor Melinda Mills, Nuffield Professor of Sociology and Head of Department, University of Oxford. For services to the Social Sciences n


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