Peter Kennedy Memorial Graduate Fellowship

Matheus joined the MA program in the Department of Economics at Simon Fraser University in 2017 and started pursuing his PhD degree in the following year. His main research interests lie in the areas of Political Economy, Economic History and Development. Within these areas, his research combines theoretical methods with the study of historical episodes to analyze political institutions and the mechanisms by which they affect the welfare of different societies. Over the last six years, Matheus has also worked as a Teaching Assistant in over a dozen undergraduate courses. In his teaching work, he combines the tried-and-true traditional methods of economics with innovative teaching techniques from other disciplines. As a result of his work as a TA, Matheus was the recipient of the 2022 Terry Heaps Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.

Marieh joined the Department of Economics at Simon Fraser University in the Fall semester of 2017. Her research focus is Monetary Economics and she uses theoretical, empirical, and experimental methods. Her focus is mainly on the transmission mechanism of monetary policy on the economy, particularly on inflation. Marieh is a versatile researcher who is passionate about finding answers to her research questions by employing her skills. She also enjoys passing on her knowledge to the younger generations through teaching. Marieh has been serving as an instructor and a TA since she joined SFU. Her evaluations continued to improve until they were only positive.

Shirleen joined SFU in 2015 in the MA program, and then began her PhD in 2016. Coming from Bangladesh, a developing nation, Shirleen's research is broadly focused on development economics. She is interested in political systems and how they impact economic growth, as well as policy issues that directly impact low income populations. Her dissertation focuses on the structural estimation of within household resource shares to provide insight on gender inequality and children's well-being. She also has research in political economy, particularly on the factors leading to democratic erosion. She is a Councilor in the SFU Graduate Student Society and acts as the graduate student representative in the Economics Working Environment Committee. She enjoys recreational sports like badminton, basketball and kickboxing. She plans to build a career in applied research, aimed at improving welfare of underprivileged communities and low income households.

Kevin joined SFU in 2016. Kevin's focus is behavioural economics, and he uses a variety of applied microeconomic methods including online experiments, field studies, and machine learning. Having previously worked in capital markets, many of his research questions are inspired by real-world financial mistakes, or are aimed at informing policy to help consumers make better decisions. His dissertation research uses an experiment to test the theory of rational inattention and delineate between several types of attention mistakes, its findings could be relevant to the policies which govern financial asset sales and disclosures to retail investors. He is a member of the SFU Experimental Economics Lab and Economics Graduate Student Society. 

Thomas Vigié, comes from France, in the Basque country. He studied Economics in France until his masters, and came here for the PhD. His research interests are in Econometrics.In particular, he aims to design and provide statistical tools that help economists answer quantitative questions with more accuracy. Besides all this teaching is something he truly enjoys, as it allows him to re-learn some concepts in a different way.