The Royal Economic Society is pleased to announce that a judging panel has awarded this year’s RES Medal for Services to the Economics Profession to Prof Sarah Smith.
The medal recognises an individual who has made an outstanding and lasting contribution to the economics profession in one or more of three dimensions: promoting economics; supporting economists; improving diversity.
Sarah Smith has been a faculty member at Bristol since 2005 and was Head of Economics from 2014 to 2021. She has held previous positions at the London School of Economics, the Financial Services Authority, HM Treasury and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
She is an applied micro-economist whose research covers public and labour economics and is founder and co-chair of Discover Economics, a RES campaign to increase diversity among economics students.
She is Secretary of the Regional Standing Committee of the Econometric Society and has previously been chair of the RES Women’s Committee (2017-20), an elected member of the RES Council (2012-2017) and the European Economics Association council (2014-2018), and Deputy Chair of the REF2021 Economics and Econometrics sub-panel. Sarah was awarded an OBE in the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to economics and education.
RES President Prof Sir Chris Pissarides, who chaired this year’s award panel said:
“Sarah Smith is one of those economists that combines a good academic record with many other activities that promote economics to the wider community and to under-represented groups that might want to join the profession if they knew more about it. She has been active in the Royal Economic Society for many years, promoting diversity and inclusion. Discover Economics, which she founded and co-chairs, targets women and ethnic minorities, and those from state schools, and prepares them to take on the discipline in later studies. I thank Sarah on behalf of the Society for her tireless engagement and congratulate her for this well-deserved prize.”
Sarah Smith will receive her medal at this year’s RES Annual Conference in July.
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