Senior Research Specialist | Human Sciences Research Council

Dr Justin Visagie is a Senior Research Specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council with a focus on urban economics, development economics and applied microeconomic research. He is also a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Free State, supporting the National Research Foundation (NRF Chair) in City-region Economies. He was previously Director of Economic Planning, Policy and Research in the Department of Economic Development, Environmental Affairs and Tourism in the Eastern Cape. Dr Visagie has expertise in microeconomic data analysis and has worked on a wide array of cross-sectional and longitudinal datasets. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and regularly produces reports for local and international organisations such as the World Bank, International Science Council, UNU-WIDER and National Treasury. Recent research projects have involved spatial administrative data mining, regional industrial policy, city-region economies, tradable services, spatial inequality, social mobility, urbanization, housing and migration. He completed his PhD at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where he won the Founders' medal from the Economic Society of South Africa for his thesis on the development of the middle class in South Africa.