Geoffrey Colin Harcourt

Geoffrey Colin Harcourt was born in Melbourne on 27 June 1931.

He was a graduate of Melbourne and Cambridge universities. [1]

Professor Harcourt was an academic at the University of Adelaide in the School of Economics from 1958 to 1985 (Professor from 1967), and in 1988 became an Emeritus Professor [2].

He also taught at Cambridge and spent his final years at UNSW [3].

In 2015 he was presented with the Distinguished Alumni Award of the University of Adelaide ‘in recognition of his outstanding leadership and contribution nationally and internationally in the field of economics’ [4].

In 2018 he received a Companion in the Order of Australia for “eminent service to higher education as an academic economist and author, particularly in the fields of post-Keynesian economics, capital theory and economic thought”. [5]

His research interests included history of economic theory, intellectual biography and Post-Keynesian theory, application and policy. Over sixty years he authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited 33 volumes, and over 400 articles, book chapters and reviews. One of his later works is the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Post-Keynesian Economics, jointly edited with Peter Kriesler. [6]

Geoff was a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and in the United Kingdom, a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia, The History of Economics Society USA, The European Society for the History of Economic Thought and The History of Economic Thought Society of Australia. [7]

He was the 2010 Joint Veblen - Commons Awardee of the Association for Evolutionary Economics USA and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of NSW (FRSN) in 2016. [8]

Geoff Harcourt passed away on 7 December 2021, aged 90.

The School of Economics has hosted a Geoff Harcourt Visiting Professorship and a Public Lecture series in his name since 2006. These are generously funded by 40 alumni and four organisations. [9]