Launch of new All-Ireland Centre of Excellence in Economics, History and Policy

A new research centre devoted to the study of economic history located in Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s University Belfast was launched by Provost Dr Linda Doyle on Thursday, September 7th, 2023.

Funded by the Higher Education Authority of Ireland’s North-South Research programme, the new centre will engage with and promote high-quality, relevant, and informative economic history across three foundational pillars – data, outreach, and research. The All-Ireland Centre of Excellence in Economics, History and Policy (CEPH) is based in Trinity’s Economics Department and Queen’s Management School.

Dr Marvin Suesse; Prof. Gaia Narciso, Prof. John Turner and Provost Dr Linda Doyle

Speaking in advance of the launch, John Turner, Professor of Finance and Financial History at Queen’s University Belfast and Co-Director of the new centre, commented:

“CEPH aims to build capacity in economic history on the island and to help decisionmakers approach the global challenges they face through an economic history lens. Marvin Suesse's new book on the history of economic nationalism is an exemplar of what we are doing in the centre. His book is based on cutting-edge research that speaks to perhaps the major geopolitical challenges and opportunities facing Ireland today.”

Gaia Narciso, Associate Professor of Economics at Trinity and Co-Director of CEPH, added:

“The aim of the Centre of Excellence is to use the past to test economic ideas, investigate how institutions work and measure the efficacy of competing public policies. It provides the academic infrastructure to train the next generation of researchers and translates academic insights into useful policy initiatives.”

The event in Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute also marked the launch of new publication “The Nationalist Dilemma: A Global History of Economic Nationalism, 1776-present” by Marvin Suesse, Assistant Professor of Economics, Trinity.

Drawing on historical case studies from thirty countries Marvin Suesse, Assistant Professor in the School of Social Sciences and Philosophy, paints a broad panorama of economic nationalism over the past 250 years in his latest book. Published by Cambridge University Press, the book explores the deep history underpinning the revival of economic nationalist policies and explains their appeal and inherent conflicts.

Members of the CEPH research team pictured with Provost Dr Linda Doyle

At the event Dr Suesse took the audience on a whistlestop tour of economic nationalism across three centuries of global history. Beginning with the foundation of the United States of America in 1776, and the conflicts faced by its founding fathers, he progresses through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, interweaving case studies from around the world before settling into the twenty-first century and the prospects of economic development in a deglobalising and fragmenting world. 

Dr Suesse explained: “The past few years have seen seemingly unprecedented protectionist and industrial policy interventions by national governments, including the US-China trade war, Western sanctions on Russia, and the programmes associated with the American Inflation Reduction Act. As trade routes and corporate supply chains are once again becoming battlegrounds for competing national interests and government interventions, it is crucial to realise that these processes are not new. We have been here before. By studying economic nationalism in the past, my book illuminates how nationalism and globalisation interact and explores the lessons this holds for the development of the modern world economy.” 

Media Contact:

Fiona Tyrrell | Media Relations | tyrrellf@tcd.ie | +353 1 896 3551