Ghazala Azmat 1979 - 2025

CEPR is extremely sad to learn of the death of Ghazala Azmat, following a brief illness. A much loved and respected member of the CEPR community, Ghazala was actively contributing in her role as Programme Director of the Organizational Economics programme until the final days of her illness.
 
Ghazala was Professor of Economics at Sciences Po, Paris at the time of her death. She previously held positions at Queen Mary University of London and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She held a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics and was a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, a Research Associate at the CEP (LSE), and a Research Fellow at CEPR, CESifo, and IZA.  She was also an Executive Committee and Council Member of the EEA. Previously, she was the Chair of the EEA Standing Committee on Women in Economics (WinE) and a committee member of the Standing Committee on Minorities in Economics (MinE). She was an editorial board member of the American Economic Journal: Policy and Economica, and had been awarded an ERC Consolidator grant to study the educational constraints faced by individuals when they are planning their future investments in human capital.
 
Remarkably, her first CEPR Discussion Paper DP4307 Gender Gaps in Unemployment Rates in OECD Countries, co authored by Alan Manning and Maia Güell, was published in 2004, two  years before the completion of her Ph.D., and she went on to became a CEPR Affiliate in the Labour Economics programme in 2014. She was a Research Fellow in CEPR’s OE, LE, PoE and PE programmes: at a time when we are trying to limit fellows’ membership to two programmes at the most, this gives some idea of the extraordinary breadth of her research. She was also a Managing Editor of Economic Policy between October 2019 and October 2023.

Her published work focussed on inequality in the workplace, education, and society, and in her wider activities with CEPR she remained a strong advocate for underserved minorities in economics and was an active member of the CEPR Women in Economics initiative.  
 
Ghazala was one of the kindest people you will ever meet. She was not only an extraordinary leader, but a truly exceptional person, and her loss to the world of academic economics is profound. Academically she had already given so much but also had so much to give in the future. 

She is survived by her husband and coauthor, Vicente Cuñat, and their two young children, for whom her loss is immeasurable.