ISabella weber
We are happy to announce Professor Isabella Weber as our eleventh Vienna Karl Polanyi Visiting Professor for the summer term 2026! In the course of her visit to Vienna, she will hold a PhD-seminar, an Internal Workshop at Central European University and an open lecture.
About
Isabella Weber is associate professor for economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center, Harvard University, and a Fellow of the OSF Ideas Workshop. She has published extensively on inflation, China, global trade and the history of economics. Her next book will be on ESSENTIAL: Inflation, Profits and Survival in an Age of Emergencies. Her key research interest is on the impacts of rising prices of essential goods like food, housing, and energy on costs of living, profits, inequality and development policies.
She has gained broad public attention beyond academia for proposing a gas price gap during the energy crisis of 2022. Weber has served as an expert for the U.S. Congress, as an advisor to the German government, and as a member of various expert commissions, including the Gas Price Commission of the German Ministry of Climate and the Expert Commission on the Debt Brake of the German Ministry of Finance.
As an economist she is committed to interdisciplinary research in the tradition of political economy. Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that, following the election of Donald Trump in 2024, she proposed an anti-fascist economics to counter current anti-democratic, violent and inegalitarian politics. She insists that inflation and austerity policies can be catalysts of far-right politics, as wrong economic policies can facilitate the rise of new forms of fascism.
More info here
PHD - SEMINAR
The Research Seminar Anti-fascist Economics: Exploration of an Urgent Agenda held at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, will be open for students from all three universities participating in the Vienna Karl Polanyi Visiting Professorship; the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), the University of Vienna and the Central European University (CEU). Participation is limited.
APPLICATION
Interested Students have to submit an application with a letter of motivation (1 page max) and a CV. Please send your application to the following mail-addresses and pay attention to the deadline:
Send your application to: polanyi_visitingprofessor@wu.ac.at, by February 27th, 2026
SEMINAR CONTENT
This PhD seminar, held by Isabella Weber (Associate Professor of Economics at UMass Amherst) and supported by Andreas Novy (Associate Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business) is open to students of social science, economics and related fields that are interested in the interactions between economic systems, economic policy making and the return of fascist forces.
LECTURES
JUNE 24th, 2026; 6 PM (CET)
“ECONOMICS IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE“
Public Lecture by Isabella Weber
@VHS Praterstern
In Memoriam Cornelia Staritz
in cooperation with ÖFSE
MORE about the CEU event coming soon
CEU Workshop
June 26th, 2026 (1pm-3pm)
Read
Weber, I. M. (2021). How China escaped shock therapy: The market reform debate. Routledge.
Weber, I. M., Lara Jauregui, J., Teixeira, L., & Nassif Pires, L. (2024). Inflation in times of overlapping emergencies: Systemically significant prices from an input–output perspective. Industrial and Corporate Change, 33(2), 297-341.
Krebs, T., & Weber, I. Can Price Controls be Optimal? The Economics of the Energy Shock in Germany.
Weber, I. M., & Wasner, E. (2023). Sellers’ inflation, profits and conflict: why can large firms hike prices in an emergency?. Review of Keynesian Economics, 11(2), 183-213.