Quamrul H. Ashraf is the Halvorsen Professor for Distinguished Teaching and Research of Economics at Williams College. He is also an Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Growth and the Journal of Population Economics. He holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Brown University. His main research program has been focused on empirically exploring deeply rooted cultural, institutional, and geographical determinants of comparative economic development and political economy across societies in the very long run, including the roles played by prehistorically determined interpersonal population diversity and the biogeographic determinants of the transition to sedentary agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution. His other work has focused on developing simulation-based models of economic growth to quantitatively assess the aggregate implications of economy-wide policy interventions to improve public health or reduce population growth; and applying the methodology of agent-based computational economics to investigate various macroeconomic phenomena, including the real costs of inflation and the role of the banking system in macroeconomic crises. His publications have appeared in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Literature, the Review of Economics and Statistics, NBER Macroeconomics Annual, Population and Development Review, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Macroeconomic Dynamics, amongst other outlets.