David Mc Williams

David McWilliams is an economist, author, journalist and broadcaster. He is adjunct Professor of Global Economics at Trinity College Dublin. He founded the world’s only economic and standup comedy festival Kilkenomics - described by the FT as “simply, the best economics conference in the world”. He is also behind Ireland’s leading literary and ideas shindig, the Dalkey Book Festival. In the UK money world, David advises Neil Woodford of the Woodford Funds. The WEF at Davos debased their currency profoundly by making him a Young Global Leader a few years back! He has devoted his entire professional life to the objective of making economics as widely available and easily understandable on as many platforms and to as many people as possible –and is having a laugh doing it. As well as writing two weekly economics columns in the Irish press, he is active on social media and was named Ireland’s “most influential Twitter user” in 2015. Punk Economics and a new venture with the FT, Punk FT, use cartoons to make economics digestible for normal, non-nerdy, punters. Once upon a time, David had a few real jobs, working extensively in the public and private sectors. He was an economist in the International Relations Department of the Irish Central Bank; Chief European Economist at UBS, Europe’s largest bank; and Head of Emerging Markets Research at Banque Nationale de Paris.