Our Story

Our student movement can be traced back to the ‘first rethinkers’, a phrase referring to Professor Frank Stilwell and his students. This group campaigned for economics curriculum change during the 1970s, sounded the alarm about the 2008 financial crisis, and has played a leading role in inspiring students across Australia and the United Kingdom in campaigning for a better economics, which ultimately led to Rethinking Economics as a global movement.

During the 1970s, when the economics curriculum at the University of Sydney had become increasingly dominated by the neoclassical approach, Frank Stilwell and his students launched a campaign that eventually resulted in a successful alternative economics curriculum called ‘political economy’. This early group of students included SRC student leader Rod O’Donnell, who eventually became a professor himself and helped campaign for Rethinking Economics again during the ‘re-awakening’ of the movement from 2011; Wayne McMillan, who later co-registered Rethinking Economics Australia as an NGO with the Australian Government; and Steve Keen, who forewarned of the 2008 financial crisis and rallied students from across the globe against mainstream economics departments with his apearances on the global news and publication of his world-renowned second edition of ‘Debunking Economics’ in 2011. Also in 2011, Tim Thornton, a long-time patron of our network, completed a national review of the economics curriculum at thirty-nine Australian universities, which remains the most complete review, diagnosis, and strategy for reform.

Tim Thornton’s research, conducted as part of his PhD at La Trobe University, while also teaching in the Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree at La Trobe University, was a frontrunner for subsequent curriculum reviews. One year later (2012), students at Manchester University carried out surveys at seven UK universities, leading to the book ‘The Econocracy’. La Trobe University’s Politics, Philosophy and Economics Society, one of the founding member-societies of ISIPE, co-wrote the now-famous open letter (2014) calling for pluralism in economics education.

In 2017, a study of nine Dutch universities led to the book ‘Economy Studies’, where Steve Keen was a keynote speaker and Tim Thornton still acts as an advisor. This all inspired a study of twenty UK universities and, in 2025, another study of nine Australian universities, accompanied by a curriculum report launch event at the University of Sydney, which brought together many of our first rethinkers and students from across Australia and New Zealand.

We owe our existence most of all to the students from across Australia and the globe who, after 2008, heeded the call to rally against neoclassical economics. We gathered in university clubs and supported each other with lecture walk-outs between 2011 and 2012. Today, we stand united under a global brand and welcome a new generation of rethinkers.