Wim Naudé is Professor of Economics at Cork University Business School, University College Cork, Ireland ; Visiting Professor in Technology, Innovation, Marketing and Entrepreneurship at RWTH Aachen University, Germany; and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He is also a Fellow of the African Studies Center, Leiden University, the Netherlands, and affiliated researcher at the Environmental Research Institute, Cork, Ireland.

Previous positions include Professor in Business and Entrepreneurship at Maastricht University, the Netherlands; Visiting Professor Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, UK; Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER, Finland; and Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Oxford, UK.

His research is concerned with entrepreneurship, technological innovation and trade as determinants and outcomes of sustainable development and growth. Current work deals with the economics of artificial intelligence; industrialisation, smart manufacturing and the circular economy; technology and inequality; digital entrepreneurship and trade; and the decline in entrepreneurship in the West.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in January 2013.