Stelios Michalopoulos

Stelios Michalopoulos serves as Professor of Economics at Brown University's Department of Economics within the School of Social Sciences, affiliated with the Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC) since 2012.

His research sits at the intersection of growth, political economy, and development economics, specializing in historical origins of comparative development through unconventional empirical strategies. He leverages historical natural experiments, anthropological sources, and novel economic activity measures to analyze ethnic, linguistic, and religious group dynamics. Key methodologies include geospatial data analysis from anthropological maps and colonial archives.

Notable research strands examine educational mobility across faiths in Africa, education's impact on democratic transitions in the DRC, occupational choice dynamics, Mediterranean refugee flows, and foreign fishing impacts on African coastal communities using remote sensing.

• European Economic Association's Award for Innovation in Teaching (2023) for co-leading the Wheeler Institute's 'African History through the Lens of Economics' lecture series

As co-lead of the Wheeler Institute initiative alongside Elias Papaioannou, Nathan Nunn, and Leonard Wantchekon, he developed an open-access course attracting over 27,000 registrations in 2022. Supported by CEPR, STEG, and the European Research Council, this initiative produced 10 main lectures, 10 special lectures, and 3 plenary sessions exploring African development challenges through historical parallels.