Economics seminar series: Decolonising quantitative methods (especially) in Economics and Development

Social scientists often proceed as if quantification guarantees a step away from their disciplines’ colonial influences, by applying universally valid methods to data and models that view the world ‘objectively’. This is now being challenged on multiple grounds – including the provenance and motivation behind statistical methods, assumptions built into statistical models, and potential biases in the data they use. This online seminar will focus on how we can realise the potential of quantitative methods to promote a ‘decolonising’ mission, without allowing them to reinforce a false neutrality and unhelpful abstraction from real-world injustices.

Led by two researchers who combine quantitative research with investigation of its methodological limitations, this seminar, hosted by The Open University, will explore the grounds on which quantitative approaches might be in need of decolonisation, and how this can best be done.

Register for this event via MS Teams

Speakers

Sharada Davidson

Sharada Davidson is a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. She uses Bayesian macroeconometric techniques to shed light on issues in international macroeconomics, international finance, development economics and central banking. She has previously worked as a Consultant for the European Central Bank. She has a particular interest in developing and emerging economies and how we can decolonise the analysis of economic data.

Sharada is also affiliated with the Economic Statistics Centre and the Fraser of Allander Institute, undertaking projects on economic measurement and statistics. She has led grant-funded work appraising the UK and Northern Ireland's subnational socioeconomic indicators and delivered projects on interregional trade and regional supply and use tables.

Fabrício Mendes Fialho

Fabrício M. Fialho is a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science‘s International Inequalities Institute. Fabrício received a PhD. in Political Science and a master's in Statistics from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to joining the LSE, Fabrício worked as a Lecturer in Quantitative Social Science at Cardiff University from 2020 to 2021 and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Sciences Po in Paris from 2018 to 2019.

His main areas of interest include political psychology, public opinion, comparative political behaviour, and research methods. He is working on a pedagogic research project on the decolonisation of quantitative methods to social science students and social activists. In August 2023, he was awarded the status of Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.