Martha Olney

Martha Olney is a Teaching Professor Emerita in Berkeley’s Economics Department. She joined the department in 1991 as a Research Associate at the Institute of Business and Economic Research. She was a visiting associate professor from 1992 to 2002, when she became an adjunct professor. She was promoted to Teaching Professor (Senior Lecturer with Security of Employment) in July 2017. She currently serves as Chair of the Department’s Undergraduate Committee.

Professor Olney has been an organizer and host of the Economic History Lunches for graduate students and faculty since 1996. Prior to joining Berkeley, she was an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she had taught since 1984. She has also taught at Stanford University (2001) and Siena College (2011-2012). She received her PhD from Berkeley in 1985.

Professor Olney is the recipient of UC Berkeley’s Social Science Division Distinguished Teaching Award (2015-16); UC Berkeley’s Faculty Award for Outstanding Mentorship of GSIs (2014-2015); UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award (2002-2003); the Economic History Association’s Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History (1997); and the Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Massachusetts (1990-1991). She was selected as a “Great Teacher in Economics” by the Stavros Center for Economic Education in 2007.

She is a member of the American Economic Association, Business History Conference, Cliometric Society, Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, Economic History Association, and the Social Science History Association. She previously served on the academic advisory board of the Financial Services Research Program of George Washington University and on the boards of the AEA’s Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, the Business History Conference.