About Paul Collier
Sir Paul Collier, (born 23 April 1949) is a British development economist who serves as the Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and co-director of the International Growth Centre. He is also a Professeur invité at Sciences Po and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. He has served as a senior advisor to the Blair Commission for Africa and was the director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank between 1998 and 2003. He has written for the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. In 2010 and 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine on its list of top global thinkers. From 2017-2018, Collier was the academic co-director of the LSE-Oxford Commission on State Fragility, Growth, and Development, and was a founding member of the International Growth Centre's Council on State Fragility. == Early life and education == Collier was born on 23 April 1949. Collier’s great-grandfather, Karl Hellenschmidt, was a German immigrant to the UK. During World War I, Collier’s grandfather, Karl Hellenschmidt Jr, changed his surname from Hellenschmidt to Collier. Collier was brought up in Sheffield where he attended King Edward VII School, a state school. Both of Collier's parents left school at the age of 12.
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