Albert O. Hirschman made invaluable contributions to the social sciences - not just in economic and political theory, but also in area studies and comparative history, always with a “bias for hope” in favour of constructive policies of reform. This public conversation will focus on a selection of contributions to grasp contemporary research and policy issues. 

Andrés M. Guiot-Isaac is a Post-doctoral Fellow in Economic History at the London School of Economics. Currently, Andrés is working on his first monograph Development with Stability, which analyses the construction of state capacities to act on developing economies, through the lens of a historical study of the emergence of an economic technocracy in Colombia (1948-1974). Before joining the LSE, Andrés completed his PhD in the University of Oxford. His doctoral dissertation, on which Development with Stability is based, was awarded the Joseph Dorfman 2024 Prize for the Best Dissertation in the History of Economics by the History of Economics Society. Andrés has also worked on the life and work of Albert. O. Hirschman. His research about Hirschman’s formative experience in Colombia, his contributions to development thought, and his possibilist method of social scientific inquiry has been published in History of Political Economy, Oeconomia and in chapters in edited volumes. He also translated Hirschman’s biography by Jeremy Adelman Worldly Philosopher (Princeton U. Press: 2013) into Spanish (Ediciones Uniandes: 2017).