Maria Savona

Maria Savona is Professor of Economics of Innovation at SPRU, Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, UK. She has been Research Associate at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK, and Associate Professor in Economics at the University of Lille 1, France. She is an economist and holds a Laurea in Economics cum laude from the Department of Economics at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (BA), and a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from SPRU.

She co-leads for SPRU a H2020 on PILLARS (Pathways to Inclusive Labour Markets) grant (2021-2023); she leads tender for the Greater London Authority on Fixing the broken link between productivity and wages; she has led a Joseph Rowntree Foundation grant on The Local Distribution of Productivity Gains: Heterogenous effects (LODGE); a UK Economic and Social Research Council grant, on Technical change, employment & inequality. A spatial analysis of households & plant data (TEMPIS); and SPRU contribution to the H2020 Innovation-Fuelled, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (ISIGrowth). She has co-led a joint SPRU-IDS project funded by the IDRC on Pathways of Structural Change and Inclusive Development.

She has advised and produced commissioned reports for the European Commission (DG CONNECT and DG EMPLOYMENT); the IADB, Inter-American Development Bank; ECLAC, United Nation Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean; UN ESCAP, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific; OECD; NESTA, UK National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts; BIS, UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; DETI, Irish Department of Trade and Industry. She has delivered keynotes on global structural change and the economics of innovation in services at the UCL School of Slavonic Studies, London; Universities of Berlin, Bremen, Jena, Strasbourg; Accademia dei Lincei, Rome; Inter-American Development Bank, Bogota, Colombia; the Economic Commission Latin American Countries (ECLAC); Max Planck Institute of Economics; Seville (Institute Prospective Technology Studies) and several others. More recently, she has been invited in ‘Thought Leadership’ expert panels by the EC, the UK Department of Industry and Trade, the UKRI, ECLAC, UNDESA, EY, EC JRC, NESTA, Microsoft and Aspen Institute, OECD and Wolskwagen Foundation.

She has designed, launched and directed the MSc in Innovation for International Sustainable Development (now Sustainable Development) at SPRU.

She is an editor for Research Policy; Advisory editor for the Journal of Evolutionary Economics; Economia Politica; The Eurasian Business Review. She is an Academic Member of the ESRC Peer Review College; part of the BEIS Peer Review Group; NESTA IPAC; Expert evaluator for the European Commission. She has been in evaluation panels for the US National Science Foundation; the Italian Ministry of Research and University; Italian National Reseach Council; National Bank of Austria; Athens University of Economics and Business; Fond National Rechèrche Luxembourg; Canadian National Research Chairs; Academy of Science of Finland, Norwegian Research Council, UKRI. She is a former member of the High Level Expert Group on the Impact of Digital Transformation on EU Labour Markets for the European Commission. She is Council Member of REDLAS – Latin American and Caribbean Network on Services Research.