Over last spring and summer, I hosted a UD student panel at the SSSA Conference and published a book chapter.

I was very pleased to organize and moderate the panel “Student Research in Development from the University of Dallas” at the Southwestern Social Sciences Association conference in April 2021. The students presented updated versions of their papers from my fall 2020 Economic Development class. I’m delighted to report our students did an excellent job, and their papers were very well received. Our faculty discussant was impressed at the quality of their research and presentations. The participating students and their papers were as follows:

• Lupe Torres, "Gender-Based Violence and Indigenous Women's Rights to Legal Access in Mexico"
• Emilio Montalvo, "The EZLN and Economic Development in Chiapas"
• Eduardo Egusquiza-Davila, "Government and Microfinance: Proper Dynamics Based on MFIs in Peru"

   

I was invited in late 2020 and early 2021 to discuss Catholic Social Thought on economic issues on the faith and science podcast "That’s So Second Millennium." The episodes, in which I discussed CST, economics and the Scottish Enlightenment, can be found here:

In research news, a long-awaited book chapter was published in the first edition of the The Economic Thought of Sire James Steuart, which reinforces the necessity of a middle class with a reflection on what this means for the U.S. today. The chapter – titled, "Beyond Montesquieu: Scottish Institutional Legal Thought and Steuart’s Spirit of the People" – is an expanded version of a paper I originally presented at the joint UD-ITAM conference on the middle class that many of you attended in 2016.  

In late May, I gave a talk to the Women in Science group of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Through Zoom, I was able to share insights from the history of economic thought on how physics models came to be used in economic methodology. I am thankful to the group, mostly from the physical and life sciences, for their invitation and their excellent questions. The more discussion across disciplines, the better!

Meanwhile, throughout spring and summer I continued working with the student editorial board, and faculty reviewers from around the world, on the first issue of Oikonomos: A Journal of Student Research in the History of Economic Thought, which is slated for publication in the coming months.