Geographical Political Economy
Introduction
GPE News
James Evans' new book out soon.
Noel Castree elected an Academician of the Academy of Social Science.
Geographical Political Economy is the longest-standing geography research group at the University of Manchester. Members of the group share a common commitment to political economy in analysing spatial and temporal unevenness as well as environmental change. Recognising economic life as geographically constituted, and capitalism as a highly variegated and differentiated system, we focus on how space, place, scale and the biophysical world are integral to economic and social processes. Conceptualising states, corporations, labour and ‘nature’ as interconnected actors, our research examines the conditions under which new economic geographies are produced, and the social, political and environmental possibilities to which they give rise. Our research is organised into four areas: Corporate Networks, Governance, Nature and Resources and Work and Employment.
Our research has been funded by the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the National Science Foundation, the RGS-IBG, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Office for the Deputy Prime Minister and the European Union.
Empirically the group's work has both a strongly local and international feel to it. Our recent research includes work on the organisation of production networks across Eastern Europe and East Asia, the restructuring of contingent labour markets in the US; the commodification of nature in Costa Rica; the political economy of labour control regimes in Singapore; the knowledge networks that enable extended global reach in the oil and gas industry; the re-regulation of EU labour markets; and the recent ‘transformation’ of the economy of Manchester. As a group, we are committed to inter-disciplinary research. Within the University of Manchester we work with colleagues in the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, Centre for the Study of Political Economy, Institute for Political and Economic Governance and the European Work and Employment Research Centre. GPE members play a lead role in the newly formed Society and Environment Research Group which bridges the School of Environment and Development and the School of Social Science. Further afield we have well-developed research links with universities in Chicago, Madison, Minnesota, Munich, Seattle, Singapore, Uppsala and Vancouver. Our members are regular organisers of, and speakers at, sessions at the largest international geography conferences (AAG, IGU, RGS-IBG), frequently participate in smaller, specialized conferences and workshops, and edit and sit on the boards of journals and book series. The Geographical Political Economy Research Group has been the ‘home’ for a number of postgraduates over the last two decades, and many have gone on to successful academic careers in the UK and beyond. Among others these include Jamie Peck, Adam Tickell, Steve Quilley, Henry Yeung, Martin Jones, Kevin Ward, Adam Holden, Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, Markus Hassler and Dean Herd.
| Name | Position | Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Gavin Bridge | Reader | Natural resource management and environmental policy, environmental governance and the social regulation of resource access, new resource geographies and the spatial and temporal dynamics of extractive industries, politics of nature. |
| Noel Castree | Professor | Capitalism-environment relationships; theorising society-nature relations; work, workers and the geography of class struggle; political economy of the academic labour process; economy-culture relationships; modes of valuing people and non-humans. |
| Neil Coe | Professor | Global production networks and local economic development; the geographies of innovation; the geographies of local and transnational labour markets; institutional and network approaches to economic development; service and cultural industries; UK, Europe and Asia Pacific. |
| Peter Dicken | Emeritus Professor | Global economic change; the geography of transnational corporations; economic development in East Asia. |
| James Evans | Senior Lecturer | Local environmental governance; the political ecology of spatial conservation models; environmental science and urban regeneration; science and society-nature relations. |
| Martin Hess | Senior Lecturer | Regional and urban economic development; firms, strategies and networks; evolution and change of production networks; organisation and embeddedness; East Asia, Europe. |
| Erik Swyngedouw | Professor | Political economy; socio-spatial and socio-environmental theory; political ecology, the politics, economics, and sociology of water, nature/society, critical theory, cities. |
| Kevin Ward | Professor | State restructuring and urban and regional governance; the changing nature and regulation of work and employment; the urban and regional politics of development and social reproduction. |
| Name | Position |
|---|---|
| Prof. Henry Yeung | Honorary Professorial Fellow, National University of Singapore |
| Prof. Jamie Peck | Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Dr. Nik Theodore | University of Illinois at Chicago |
| Dr. Anthony Vigor | Policy Advisor, Douglas Alexander MP |
| Name | Position | Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Konstantinos Antonopouls | PhD Student | |
| Janice Astbury | PhD Student | |
| Jason Beery | PhD Student | The use and governance of the outer space resource: perpetuating underdevelopment and inequality. |
| Nadia Von Benzon | PhD Student | |
| Alexandra Buckland-Wright | PhD Student | |
| Dawn Cole | PhD Student | |
| Alan Davies | PhD Student | |
| Suraya Fazel-Ellahi | PhD Student | |
| Lisa Ficklin | PhD Student | Indigenous environmentalism, ethnic autonomy and livelihood security: A cross cultural ethic in the context of valuation, power and policy in Latin America. |
| Katherine Jones | PhD Student | Migrant workers; labour markets; globalisation. |
| Lazaros Karaliotas | PhD Student | |
| Ismail Kodaz | PhD Student | |
| Piotr Niewiadomski | PhD Student | Interdependencies between the corporate growth and spatial expansion of international hotel groups. |
| Miranda Morgan | PhD Student | The urban political ecology of hunger. |
| Robin de la Motte | PhD Student | Waterworks: public participation, social capital and co-production in the (peri) urban water sector in Latin America. |
| Laura Pottinger | PhD Student | |
| Hugo Ramero | PhD Student | |
| Brian Rosa | PhD Student | |
| Ioanna Tantanasi | PhD Student | |
| Isaac Tchuwa | PhD Student | |
| Georgios Tzimas | PhD Student | Understanding local geographies of retail development and retail regulation. |
| Mark Usher | PhD Student | |
| Yue Wang | PhD Student | |
| Jennifer Watts | PhD Student | |
| Jana Wendler | PhD Student | |
| Yu-Hin Wong | PhD Student |