Episode 43 -The Compassionate Economy

In this episode of Head2Head I talk with two remarkable political economists who are passionate and informed advocates of the “compassionate economy “ - the idea that economy should serve the people and not the other way around and is kinder to our life sustaining planet.

Professor Liz Grant holds a chair in Global Health and Development at the University of Edinburgh and is responsible for developing and supporting global health partnerships with colleagues in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) communities, and for local and global advocacy translating global health research into action.

Liz is a co-director of the University’s Global Compassion Initiative developing work on the value base of the Sustainable Development Goals, the science of compassion, and the contribution that faith communities make to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Liz has led the development of a suite of global health MSc programmes, MOOCs and coordinates the Global Health PhD programme all specifically designed for students from resource constrained countries. She currently is the Co-Director of the Masters of Family Medicine and the MSc in Global Health Challenges

Her own research interests span planetary health and palliative care in contexts of poverty and conflict – new beginnings and better endings.

She sits on the Scottish Government NHS Global Citizenship Board and was on the Board of Directors for the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, (CUGH), an association of over 170 Academic institutions training in Global Health, and currently chairs the CUGH Research Committee.

DR KATHERINE TREBECK is a political economist, writer and advocate for economic system change. She co-founded the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and also WEAll Scotland, its Scottish hub. She is writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh Futures Institute and a Strategic Advisor to Australia’s Centre for Policy Development. She sits on a range of boards and advisory groups such as The Democracy Collaborative, the C40 Centre for Urban Climate Policy and Economy, and the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity.She is a New Economics Senior Fellow at the ZOE Institute, a Fellow of The Leaders Institute and a Distinguished Fellow of the Schumacher Institute. She worked for Oxfam GB for eight years’, where she developed Oxfam’s Humankind Index and led work on downscaling the ‘doughnut’ for various contexts.Katherine has Bachelor Degrees in Economics and in Politics (University of Melbourne) and holds a PhD in Political Science from the Australian National University. She was Honorary Professor at the University of the West of Scotland and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde.In 2019 she co-authored The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a Grown Up Economy (with Jeremy Williams and published by Policy Press), and her report Being Bold: Budgeting for Children’s Wellbeing was launched in March 2021.

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