Emeritus Professor Jim Perkins

Emeritus Professor Jim Perkins

MA, PhD (Cambridge), MCom (Melbourne)

Emeritus Professor Jim Perkins is an Emeritus Professor in Economics at the University of Melbourne. His specialisation has been in macroeconomic policy, and the Australian financial system.

Professor Perkins completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge and during that time, he received a scholarship to study Economics at the University of Melbourne for one year. After finishing his degree, he returned to Australia in 1953 to take up a Research Fellowship at the Australian National University. He subsequently returned to Melbourne to join the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne in 1957. Emeritus Professor Perkins is the author of many books on macroeconomics and was elected to Fellowship of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 1973.

Wanting to offer the same opportunity he received to other PhD students studying economics, he established ‘The Jim Perkins PhD Travelling Scholarship’ in 2014. The scholarship will operate in perpetuity and will be open for award annually to one or more students undertaking a PhD in economics in a subject matter of relevance to both the UK and Australia, at either one of the Russell Group Universities of the UK (with a preference for the University of Cambridge), or the University of Melbourne. The Russell Group represents 24 leading UK universities. The scholarship will allow the recipient to undertake research at the reciprocal university for a period of up to one year.

The first recipient is Mr Kai Barron, a PhD student in economics at the University College London, who will come to the University of Melbourne in early 2016 for a few months.

Emeritus Professor Perkins hopes that consideration could be given to other awards that would enable top graduate students in Australia to undertake research in leading Universities in Britain and vice versa.