Francis Teal is currently a research associate of the Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) at the University of Oxford and a Managing Editor of Oxford Economic Papers.

He was a Deputy Director of the CSAE from 1996 until 2012. From 2002 to 2006 he was the Director of the ESRC funded Global Poverty Research Group (GPRG). Before joining the Centre in 1991 Francis Teal held positions in Tanzania at the Tanzania Investment Bank, in the UK at the National Institute of Economics and Social Research and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and in Australia at the Bureau of Agricultural Economics and the Australian National University. He has worked on a wide range of trade and development policy issues. He is currently working on projects studying the evolution of firms in Africa, the productivity of agriculture and the links between skills, employment and incomes in African labour markets.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in April 2007.