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UCT researcher awarded esteemed IEA fellowship
25 March 2026 | STORY SARAH MARRIOTT. PHOTO SUPPLIED. Read time 5 min.
The only International Economic Association (IEA) Fellow from the country, Emeritus Professor Murray Leibbrandt is a distinguished academic economist. He studies poverty‚ inequality and labour market dynamics in South Africa using longitudinal survey data and‚ in particular‚ panel data. He is being acknowledged for his high-quality policy work and excellence in research publications through the creation and dissemination of research-driven contributions to popular writing and the broader economics curriculum.
Emeritus Professor Leibbrandt has an illustrious academic career having held the DSI/NRF [Department of Science and Innovation/National Research Foundation] Research Chair in Poverty and Inequality Research for 15 years. He was the director of the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU), based at UCT’s School of Economics, for over 20 years.
He served as UCT Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Poverty and Inequality and is now an emeritus professor and a senior research scholar following his retirement at the end of last year. Leibbrandt directs the African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research (ACIER) under the African Universities Alliance (ARUA), and is principal investigator for SALDRU’s Health and Aging in Africa: Longitudinal Studies in South Africa project.
Leibbrandt explained that the ‘captains’ of the IEA have always been at the frontier of international development, fostering global economic dialogue and promoting high-level academic research. This makes the fellowship a special award.
“It's affirmation from the very people I've spent my career aspiring to be like,” he said. “As I was growing as a scholar, they were people that I really looked up to, both in terms of what they were doing economically and what they were doing with the work. Members include eminent professors, some of whom win Nobel Prizes and some of whom swap between academia and policy positions as ministers of finance or national planning. It’s crucially important, I think, that the association hasn't just been an abstract society of economists.”
Influential scholarship with deep roots in policy
Leibbrandt was a member of the Executive Committee of the IEA from 2017 to 2023 and described the association as a leader enabling ‘pollination’ between the academic economics profession and policy at the most senior levels.
“This is a very special award... it’s affirmation from the very people I've spent a whole career aspiring to be like.”
It is especially important to Leibbrandt that African economists and scholars achieve similar recognition. To him it is striking that in South Africa, and in many other developing countries, academic economists can enjoy a much closer working relationship with government without “pretending they are making policy”. “We're not,” he said, “but this closeness to the policy process doesn't happen everywhere… it’s quite exceptional.”
Leadership, scholarship and lasting impact on poverty research
Professor Vimal Ranchhod, director of SALDRU, noted that this is a rare and prestigious fellowship that appropriately recognises Leibbrandt's stature and contribution in an international community of scholars – particularly within the subset working on poverty, inequality and development.
Professor Ariane De Lannoy, SALDRU’s deputy director, agreed. “Murray has fundamentally shaped how we understand poverty and inequality in South Africa and beyond, and how we can respond to it,” she said. “He has built a truly extraordinary body of rigorous academic work, while always ensuring it serves the ‘greater good’ and contributes to building a more inclusive society.”
The award is a source of great pride for SALDRU. “It reflects a collective commitment to research excellence, rigorous and policy-relevant scholarship, and a deep engagement with real-world challenges,” Professor De Lannoy said. “These are values that Murray so very clearly embodies and has helped to build within the unit in the many years of his leadership.”
A legacy of collaboration and collective achievement grounded in academic excellence
What’s awkward about these awards is that: “They come to a person,” Leibbrandt explained. “But it is rarely only about the person and there have been so many serendipities in my career. I have been blessed to work in a university, faculty, department and research unit that have each facilitated and enabled the many opportunities that have come my way. And that value academic excellence and the contribution that you can make through your research. This never gets listed in such awards.”
“Murray has fundamentally shaped how we understand poverty and inequality in South Africa and beyond.”
For Leibbrandt the award is a credit to UCT, the Commerce Faculty, the Economics Department and his SALDRU family. “Our close research colleagues from elsewhere on our continent do their work from within very different university and institutional research milieus. The fact that we have research units at UCT is not to be taken for granted. Many African scholars have no such thing,” he said. “You need a university that creates a supportive environment, has good graduate students, a faculty that really believes in you, and a research structure and a research office that allow you to be the best that you can be.”
According to Leibbrandt the privilege young scholars have to be in this kind of research and policy space in turn demands academic excellence of them. “It's a responsibility – and it usually inspires people rather than chases them away. The fact that there's no conflict between doing the type of work that we do and being excellent academics is a wonderful mandate for young economists”.
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