About us
SEA was launched in June 2024 and is led by Professor Mariana Mazzucato and Associate Professor Carolina Alves from the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
We envision a global economic system that places people and the planet at its core, moving beyond traditional theories that treat systemic issues like climate change and inequality as externalities. Our goal is to revise economic theory and practice through holistic, inclusive, and sustainable approaches.
New Theory
We advocate for an economic framework that recognizes the collective creation of value and the proactive role of public institutions in shaping markets. Our approach challenges dominant economic thinking and embraces complexity, uncertainty, and interdependence, aiming for a society where everyone can thrive. Co-creation is central to our methodology, ensuring diverse voices are integrated into the strategy and scope of our economy.
New Practice
We translate new theory into real-world contexts through practice-based theorizing, which allows us to develop, refine, and test new policies effectively. By empowering governments to actively shape their markets and promote green innovation, we can address global challenges and ensure sustainable development.
New Voices
We elevate historically marginalized voices, fostering a transnational alliance of change-oriented thinkers and practitioners. By prioritizing perspectives from diverse communities, we aim to advance co-created economic theories and practices that are just and equitable.
Why within the IIPP? In the last years, countless initiatives, institutions and schools of thought have challenged mainstream economics given its failure to address the most pressing issues of our time – from social and health to climate crises. The UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), founded by Professor Mariana Mazzucato in 2018, is at the forefront of this global debate on how to ensure that economies work for people and the planet and are proactively designed to be inclusive, sustainable and healthy. By collaborating with governments and multilateral organisations around the globe, it is advancing the necessary paradigm shift in economic theory and practice by reimagining the state’s role in the economy, from simply fixing market failures to actively creating a different type of capitalism. From Brazil to South Africa, to Colombia and Barbados, IIPP has co-designed and advanced modern industrial and innovation strategies oriented around climate and inclusion goals.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus established the all-female WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All to reframe health for all as a public policy objective and ensure that national and global economies and finance are structured to deliver on this ambitious goal. The Council’s final report Health for All: Transforming Economies to Deliver What Matters was published in May 2023 and is continuing to resonate with governments around the world – including in Brazil where the Portuguese translation was launched in September 2023 in partnership with the Ministry of Health and where it stands to influence Brazil’s G20 Presidency.
This background provides the perfect opportunity to harness the momentum and influence of the above initiatives, by continuing to build a global alliance of women economists from the Global South and North committed to advancing more inclusive and sustainable economies.
SEA's approach centres on bringing new economic theories to the forefront by facilitating direct engagement between innovative economists and practitioners. Building on IIPP’s methodology of practice-based theorising, SEA focuses on translating theory into practice and on strengthening the theory by drawing on real-world insights.
SEA is currently funded by Co-Impact and the Ford Foundation.
People
Principal Investigator (PI)
Founding Director and Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value
UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)Mariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). Her previous posts include the RM Phillips Professorial Chair at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University. She is a member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and the Italian Academy of Sciences Lincei.
We are stuck with mainstream economic theory that justifies policy only as correcting market failures. This means that by design, not by coincidence, we have reactive policies that are too little too late. We need to replace this with a theory of the economy as an outcome (of governance structures and relationships) and policy as shaping that outcome, versus fixing the failures along the way.
Co-I
Associate Professor in Economics
UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)Dr Carolina Alves is a trained economist whose work is grounded in Latin American Structuralism, Dependency Theory, Classical Political Economy, Marxian and Kaleckian macroeconomics, and the new Cambridge tradition, especially the contributions of Joan Robinson and Tony Lawson. Positioned firmly within heterodox economics, her research explores Critical Macro-Finance, Structuralist Macroeconomics, the Decolonisation of Economics, and Heterodox Economic Theory.
Programme Manager
Liliana Hertling manages the Strategic Economics Alliance (SEA) at UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is a political economist and development practitioner who has previously led programmes supporting participatory policymaking, environmental governance, and gender equality in low- and middle-income countries. Her research has focused on the climate-sovereign debt nexus. She holds degrees from the London School of Economics, Sciences Po, and Brown University.
Research Fellow
Dr Irene Selwaness is the Strategic Economics Alliance (SEA) Research Fellow at UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and Associate Professor of Economics at Cairo University's Faculty of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on social protection, labour markets, gender, the care economy, and the future of work in the Middle East. She is a Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum and holds a PhD in Economics from Université Paris 1–Panthéon Sorbonne.
Project Assistant
Diana Vasquez Villanueva is the Strategic Economics Alliance (SEA) Project Assistant at the UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is a Peruvian economist with experience in public management and evidence-based policy. She brings expertise in project management and data-intensive problem solving, with a track record of leading teams in complex institutional settings and firsthand understanding of development challenges and context-specific policy design.
Project Assistant
Dina Aita is a Project Assistant at the Strategic Economics Alliance (SEA) at UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is a Palestinian scholar with experience in project management, economic research, and development policy. She has worked with organisations including UNDP and the World Economic Forum, contributing to projects on economic empowerment, gender equality, and sustainable development.
Research Fellow
Lara Merling is the Strategic Economics Alliance (SEA) Research Fellow at the UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP).
Advisory Board
Adriana E. Abdenur is co-President of the Global Fund for a New Economy and co-founder of Plataforma CIPÓ in Rio. A Brazilian policymaker and scholar, she served as Special Advisor for international affairs to President Lula (2023–25). She holds a PhD from Princeton, an MA from Columbia, and an AB from Harvard, has taught in Brazil and abroad, and publishes on global governance, climate, and sustainable development.
Jayati Ghosh is an Indian development economist. She taught economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi for nearly 35 years, and since January 2021 she has been Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Her core areas of study include international economics and globalisation, employment patterns in developing countries, macroeconomic policy, and gender and development.
The epistemological structures of mainstream economics do not allow entry.
Her work focuses on alternative development paths for African economies. She specialises in the analysis of innovation systems in connection to equitable development and inclusive development, and has done pioneering work on innovation in the African informal sector. Trained as an Economist, she holds a Masters in Science and Technology Policy by the Science and Policy Research Unit (University of Sussex), and a doctorate in Development Studies from the University of Oxford.
The fear of polluting the elegance of economic modelling has put economists in a very narrow space with very narrow tools.
Carlota studies the socio-economic impact of technical change and the historical context of growth and development. She is the author of the influential Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: the Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages (Elgar 2002), which focussed on the role that finance plays in the diffusion of technological revolutions.
We are living in a time of distorted capitalism, supported by the reigning economic theory and by the wrong and inadequate government policies. They are more likely to punish the victims than the culprits.
Bogolo Joy Kenewendo's career spans trade & investment, finance & development, and public policy. Kenewendo served as a Specially Elected Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry in Botswana. She serves in various corporate and philanthropic boards including as Chairperson of Bank Gaborone, Non-Executive Director of the Africa Free Trade Area adjustment Fund Corporation and the Africa Center for Economic Transformation.
The complementarity between climate action and sustainable development is indisputable. Dealing with climate policy in a silo could have repercussions that reverse any economic gains thus far.
Former Under-Secretary-General and Associate Administrator
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)Master's in International Affairs and MBA, Columbia University. Senior Advisor to Blackstone Infrastructure Fund, prior to that, CEO, Global Water Development Partners, a Blackstone portfolio company. With the International Finance Corporation: former experience includes leading the utilities business, petrochemicals and manufacturing and services; Global Head, water and waste business; Co-Business Line Leader, PPP Advisory Practice; Director, Sustainable Business Advisory.
Previously, for the success in the issues that the SDGs are trying to address, two things were needed: policy and financial frameworks. Now, we experience the need of social instruments; without inclusion and without equity, the solutions will not be resilient.
Claudia López is the former Mayor of Bogotá, previously serving as a Senator for the Republic of Colombia from 2014 to 2019. Her dedication to strengthening human rights and the rule of law makes her one of the most well-known contributors to democratic development in Colombia. A former researcher for New Rainbow Corporation and Civil Society Electoral Mission, Claudia is one of Colombia's most respected political analysts.
If we really want solutions, we weed youth, women and nature-based solutions.
Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences
UNESCO Inclusive Policy LabGabriela Ramos is the Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences of UNESCO, where she oversees the contributions of the institution to build inclusive and peaceful societies. Her agenda includes the achievement of social inclusion and gender equality, advancing youth development; promotion of values through sports; anti-racism and antidiscriminatory agenda and ethics of artificial intelligence.
We need SEA to help confront inequalities, the greatest challenge of our lives, not only with better economic theory and policies but with a different way of engaging with citizens - buildingtrust, agency, and dignity in the process.
Funders
Strategic Economics Alliance (SEA) is funded by Co Impact and Ford Foundation.
