Candidate Biographies
Steve Paschall
Steve Paschall joined AFEE while engaged in research on the theories of capitalist development of Thorstein Veblen and Karl Marx as a graduate student in economics at Oklahoma State University. His research continued to lead him back to the Journal of Economic Issues and its publisher: AFEE. Steve served on the Board of Directors of AFEE, chaired the Finance Committee, assisted the Board of Directors in the process of contracting for publication of the Journal of Economic Issues and served on the committee charged with updating AFEE’s Bylaws. In 2019 Steve was the recipient of the AFEE Service Award. His early career was in regional health systems planning and health services administration during which he attended Law School at Duquesne University and graduated with a JD. Actively engaged in the practice of law, he also teaches law at the University of Pittsburgh. He studies the co-evolution of law and the economy applying the methodology of John R. Commons and has published two books on that subject. Glen Atkinson and Steve published Law and Economics from an Evolutionary Perspective. Glen Atkinson, Eric Hake and Steve published Evolution of the Corporation in the United States. He has published articles on law and economics issues in the Journal of Economic Issues.
Danielle Guizzo
Danielle Guizzo is Associate Professor at the School of Economics and a researcher at the Centre for Higher Education Transformations (CHET) at the University of Bristol, UK. She was the 2024 recipient of the Clarence E. Ayres Scholar prize, awarded by the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE). Danielle’s research expertise lies at the intersection between the history of economics, economic sociology, and political economy, working on themes related to institutional histories, higher education, social policy, economic expertise, and pluralism from a historical and transational perspective. She holds a PhD in Economics & Public Policy from the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil (2016), and previously held positions at the University of the West of England (2016-2020), and the State University of Santa Catarina (2012-2015). Danielle is currently the elected Coordinator of the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) (2022-2026), and an editorial board member of Journal of Economic Issues and Review of Political Economy.
Danielle has also sat in several committees of academic associations globally, including D-Econ: Diversifying and Decolonising Economics, History of Economics Society (CP Committee), the Italian Association for the History of Political Economy (Storep), and as International Director of AFEE’s Board (2023-2025).
Rojhat Avsar
Rojhat Avsar is Associate Professor of Economics at Columbia College Chicago. Rojhat received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 2010. He has published in various heterodox journals, including the JEI. In his scholarship, he approached current policy debates from old institutionalist and evolutionary perspectives. For Rojhat, John R. Commons and T. Veblen are major inspiring intellectual figures.
He is the author of two books, The Evolutionary Origins of Markets: How Evolution, Psychology and Biology Have Shaped the Economy (Routledge, 2020), and Virtues, Morals and Markets: Why Moral Identity Matters (Routledge, 2024). Behind his primary intellectual motivation in pursuing these projects lies his desire to integrate various evidence and research programs scattered across multiple fields to build a coherent and original narrative for how human instincts (not calculation) are strong drivers of economic behavior. His recent scholarship is focused on developing a cognitive theory of institutions.
At Columbia College Chicago, Rojhat was hired to develop the economics curriculum from the ground up in the multidisciplinary Department of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences. He developed and taught courses such as Ethics and Economics, Economics of the Post-Apocalypse, and Politics of Money, which were informed by institutionalist and evolutionary literature.
Rojhat has regularly presented his work at AFEE and ASSA conferences, served as a reviewer for the JEI, and taught in AFEE’s 2023 Summer Workshop in D.C. He was the President of AFIT in 2018 and is currently the Association Director for ASE. He is eager to rejoin the AFEE board and assist the association in expanding its outreach to a new generation of institutionalist scholars.
Avraham Baranes
Avraham Baranes received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri – Kansas City in 2016 and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Business at Elmhurst University. A member of AFEE since 2012, his research is rooted in the OIE perspective with a primary focus on financialization and the way in which it generates economic precarity, providing a framework for understanding modern economic crises and systemic instability. His work has been published in heterodox journals, such as the Journal of Economic Issues, Review of Radical Political Economics, and Forum for Social Economics and he has also contributed to two edited volumes that approach issues of precarity and sustainability through a Post Keynesian Institutionalist lens. He is also committed to interdisciplinary scholarship, co-authoring papers with peers in the field of sociology, political science, and management and currently serves on the editorial board of the JEI. As a member of the AFEE board, Avi would be committed to helping navigate the organization through present-day uncertainties and help shape heterodox economics for the future.
Ilene Grabel
Ilene Grabel is Distinguished University Professor and co-director of the MA program in Global Economic Affairs at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver.
Grabel’s research focuses on global financial governance (including feminist approaches to financial governance); transregional, multilateral, and regional financial institutions; the political economy of domestic and international financial policies; developmental finance and the financial systems of countries in the Global South; financial and debt crises; capital controls, exchange rates, and central banking; and “post-American” transformations in the global financial order.
Her research has been published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Review of Social Economy, Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics, Feminist Economics, Review of International Political Economy, Economía Informa, Ola Financiera, International Review of Applied Economics, International Affairs, International Journal of Political Economy, Review of Radical Political Economics, Eastern Economics Journal, Journal of Economic Issues, Forum for Social Economics, Current History, International Theory, and Development and Change. Grabel served as a co-editor of the Review of International Political Economy from 2013-2017.
Grabel’s book, When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence (MIT Press, 2017), won the 2019 European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy Robinson Prize, the 2019 International Studies Association International Political Economy Best Book Award, and the 2018 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Book Prize. Her previous book (with Ha-Joon Chang), Reclaiming Development (Bloomsbury Publishing, [2004]2014), has been translated widely.
Grabel has conducted commissioned research for the Division of Globalization and Development Strategies of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UN Group of 24, Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), International Poverty Centre for Inclusive Growth of UNDP, United Nations Women, International Labour Organization, UN University/World Institute for Development Economics Research, and the NGOs Action Aid, Third World Network, and New Rules for Global Finance.
Teresa Perry
Dr. Teresa Perry is an Assistant Professor of Economics at California State University, San Bernardino, where she teaches Introduction to Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, Intermediate Microeconomics, Working with Data, and the Economics of Racial Inequality and Discrimination. She earned her Ph.D. from Colorado State University, specializing in political economy, public economics, and regional economics. Her research examines the structural foundations of gender and racial inequality in labor markets, health, and unpaid care work, combining both empirical and theoretical approaches. She is particularly interested in how capitalism and institutional power shape the lived experiences of women and other marginalized groups. Her work also explores the political economy of addiction, focusing on how institutions and economic power impact the use of addictive goods. Dr. Perry recently co-edited Gender and the Economy, a book exploring the gender gap in economics. She is a regular participant in AFEE sessions at the ASSA conferences, has published in the Journal of Economic Issues, and began serving on AFEE’s Committee on Regional and International Conferences (CORIC) in January 2025.
Natalia Maria de Lima Bracarense
Natália Maria de Lima Bracarense is an economist specializing in heterodox economic theory, development, and institutional analysis. She earned her PhD in Economics from the University of Missouri–Kansas City and has since held academic and research positions across the United States, France, Brazil, and international organizations. She served as an Associate Professor of Economics at North Central College (U.S.) for 8 years and is currently an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Toulouse Capitole , affiliated with the LEREPS research center.
Her research engages with development theory, Latin American structuralism, feminist and institutional economics, and the political economy of money. She has been a visiting scholar at Duke University, Paris I–Sorbonne, and Renmin University in China, and has collaborated with the OECD on governance and regulatory reform projects. She has published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Economic Issues, Review of Political Economy, and Review of Post Keynesian Economics, as well as contributing to edited volumes with Routledge and Palgrave Macmillan.
Fluent in Portuguese, English, and French, with working knowledge of Spanish and Italian, Natália combines her international teaching and research experience with a commitment to interdisciplinary approaches to political economy and development.
Robert McMaster
Robert McMaster has been Professor of Political Economy in the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow since 2012. Prior to that he was a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at Glasgow and in the Department of Economics at the University of Aberdeen. He served on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Issues from 2009-2012, and is currently a member of the editorial board of the Review of Radical Political Economics. He co-edited the Review of Social Economy from 2005-2017. A longstanding member of AFEE, Institutional Economics influences his research and teaching. For instance, with John Davis, he authored Health Care Economics, which engages with institutionalist themes to critique standard health economics and develop the basis of an alternative. He has published widely, including, Cambridge Journal of Economics; Economic Geography; Journal of Economic Issues; Journal of Institutional Economics, and many others. He is a recipient of the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy’s (EAEPE) K. William Kapp prize, and the Association for Social Economics’ Ludwig Mai award.
Beliza Borba de Almeida
Beliza Borba de Almeida is a Brazilian independent scholar working in the fields of philosophy of economics and the history of economic thought from an Original Institutionalist perspective. She studied Philosophy and Economics at the Federal University of Paraná, where she also earned an M.A. in 2023 and a Ph.D. in Economic Development in 2025, under the supervision of Professors Felipe Almeida and William Waller. In Brazil, she serves as a regional representative on the board of the Brazilian Association of Researchers in Economic History (ABPHE).
In her doctoral dissertation – A Multi-Theoretical Analysis of Power: An Inquiry into Reality of Oppressions Through Radical Institutionalism – she connects the Radical Institutionalist analysis of power to the intersectional approach from feminist studies, emphasizing the importance of understanding the connected experiences of subordinated groups to grasp systems of oppressions. She also proposes an ontological approach to understanding community’s collective forms of legitimation, based on their particular processes of valuation. This research has led to co-authored publications in Cambridge Journal of Economics – “The Ontology of Original Institutional Economics and Social Positioning Theory” (with William Waller) – and in the Journal of Economic Issues – “Institutionalist on Power: Social Ontology, and Intersectionality” (with William Waller), and “Looking for Reasonableness within 21st Century Neoliberalism: Toward Avoiding the Spread of Fascist Values” (with Felipe Almeida).