Serena Merrino

University College London

Serena is a Lecturer in Economics (teaching) at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, where she teaches modules in macroeconomics and 'Political Economy of European Integration'. She obtained her PhD from SOAS University of London in 2019. Previously, she completed a MSc in Macroeconomic Policy and Financial Markets at the Barcelona GSE. She also studied economics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and at the Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires. More recently, she has worked as a research fellow to the South African Reserve Bank and a consultant to United Nations University (WIDER).

Serena's research focuses on central banking and the international political economy of money. Her doctoral thesis explores the political nature of international currencies and, drawing from the Israeli-Palestinian experience, it proposes the concept of a 'settler colonial currency'. On similar lines, she is currently investigating the evolution of the Italian financial sector within the Eurozone architecture, and how the Southern regions' financial subordination inhibits the structural transformations necessary to their catching-up. Besides, Serena's interests relate to the empirical assessment of central bank policies, and particularly their heterogeneous and distributional effects. At the moment, she is working with Dr. Ilias Chondrogiannis on a project funded by the South African Reserve Bank, aimed at providing new evidence on the effects of macroprudential measures on the South African credit market.

 

 

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