BIO

Gordon Menzies is a College Lecturer (tutor) at Regent's Park College (Oxford University), and an adjunct Associate Professor in Economics at UTS.

 

After obtaining a First Class Honours degree from the University of New England in 1985, Gordon worked as an economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) until 2002. He was present during the transformation of the Australian economy under the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments, and was seconded to the Federal Treasury in the mid-1990s to advise on modelling Australia's liberalised financial sector for forecasting and policymaking. He was at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) over 2003 to 2026.

 

His published work includes articles in leading journals such as Experimental Economics and the Journal of Business Ethics. His academic distinctions include the Robert Jones Prize as the top-scoring Economics Master's student at the Australian National University (1996), a Commonwealth Scholarship for doctoral study at Oxford (1998-2001), the jointly awarded Arrow Prize for the best economics research paper in Berkeley Electronic Journals (2009), the UTS Individual Teaching Award as the university's best teacher (2008), and an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation recognising his contribution to teaching the "human side" of economics (2009).

 

Gordon first attracted wide public attention through his research on the revival of Australian manufactured exports following the trade reforms of the 1980s. His 2015 article, Stop the Boats: Do the Ends Justify the Means?, was even more influential, ranking among the top 5 per cent of papers tracked by Altmetric and attracting coverage from major news outlets. He provided an early critique of Trump-era populism in the ABC article Democratic Delusion or the Wisdom of the Crowds? (2016) and delivered a public lecture on the moral dimensions of the Global Financial Crisis at the University of Oxford in 2017. That lecture later inspired both a Guardian essay for a general readership, Does Working with Money Make Us Worse People? (2018), and a subsequent scholarly treatment in the Journal of Business Ethics (2026). These concerns with the moral dimensions of public life also informed Western Fundamentalism, which was shortlisted for the Australasian Christian Book of the Year Award in 2021. Ideas from the book subsequently reached a wider audience through online media, including a discussion that attracted more than 400,000 views. Following further study in theology and philosophy, he published an article in Science and Christian Belief (2026) arguing for evidence-based reasoning in discussions of gender.

 

Across a career spanning central banking, public policy, university teaching and interdisciplinary scholarship, Gordon has sought to connect economics with broader questions of ethics, culture, theology and public life. His work combines academic research, public engagement and a commitment to making complex ideas accessible to a wide audience.

 

UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY APPOINTMENTS

  • Associate Professor
    University of Technology Sydney, Economics, Sydney, Australia2003 - present

MEDIA

Showing all associated media thumbnails.

NON-ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Visiting Scholar
    Macquarie University, Robert Menzies College, Sydney, Australia1 Jan 2023 - 31 Dec 2024

PROFILE TYPE

  • Academic

AVAILABILITY

  • Media enquiries
  • Masters Research or PhD student supervision

DISCIPLINES