John Whittaker

After an earlier career in business, John Whittaker obtained a PhD in Nuclear Physics before joining the academic world as an Economist in the 1980s. He taught for several years at the University of Cape Town and held visiting positions at City University Business School and Nottingham University before moving to Lancaster University in 1996.

Dr Whittaker's research and teaching experience includes monetary policy, money and banking, macroeconomics and financial economics. Among his publications are papers in the fields of alternative monetary regimes and mathematical economics. He is currently interested in sovereign debt problems and the operation of the eurosystem of central banks. Some recent work has focused on digital currency and crypto-currencies.

From 2004 to 2009 he was a Member of the European Parliament for the UK Independence Party, and was a member of the Parliament's Economic and Monetary Committee.