Joanne Roberts

Joanne Roberts is the third President and Professor of Social Sciences (Economics) at Yale-NUS College. Her presidential term began on 1 July 2022. Prior to becoming president, she served as the College’s Executive Vice President (Academic Affairs) from 2018 to 2022. As Executive Vice President (Academic Affairs), she oversaw all academic and student programming. She is deeply committed to broad inclusive models of education in supporting students’ academic and personal development.

Professor Roberts did her undergraduate training in economics at the University of Waterloo and her graduate work at Queen’s University in Canada. In 1998, she joined the faculty at the University of Toronto, and in 2008, the University of Calgary, before joining Yale-NUS in as Associate Dean (Faculty Development) in January 2017. Professor Roberts is a public economist, interested in how incentives affect behaviour in broad number of situations. Her most recent work has focused on legal institutions, tax evasion and charitable giving. She has published papers in journals such as American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, The Journal of Public Economics and International Economic Review.

She has served as a member of the executive of the Canadian Economic Association, President of the Canadian Economics Women’s Network, and co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Economics. A winner of the Polanyi research prize, Professor Roberts previously held the Canada Research Chair in the Economics of Organizations at the University of Calgary. She also served on the board of the Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association. In 2017, Professor Roberts moved to Singapore with her partner Professor Eugene Choo and their two children. In her spare time, she loves to read, walk, and travel.