Dr Neil M. Coe
Position: Reader in Economic Geography
BA, PhD (Durham)
Room Number: 2.045 [Arthur Lewis Building]
Tel: +44(0)161 275 3646
Fax: +44(0)161 275 7878
Email: neil.coe@manchester.ac.uk
Editorial Board Member, Journal of Economic Geography, 2010 onwards.
Member of the ESRC’s Postdoctoral Fellowship review college, 2008 onwards.
Geography Compass, Co-editor, Economic Geography Section, 2007 onwards.
Member of the Summer Institute in Economic Geography Steering Committee, 2006 onwards.
Chair, Economic Geography Research Group, 2006-2009.
Book Review Editor, Journal of Economic Geography, 2005-2009.
Member of International Advisory Board, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 2001-2007.
Book Review Editor, Service Industries Journal, 2001-2005.
Specific research interests
I am an economic geographer with research interests in the following areas:
- global production networks and local economic development;
- the geographies of local and transnational labour markets;
- the geographies of innovation;
- institutional and network approaches to economic development.
These concerns are explored through empirical research into a number of sectors across a range of geographies:
- producer services, most notably temporary staffing and computer services in the UK, Europe and the Asia Pacific;
- consumer services, particularly retailing in the UK, East Asia and Eastern Europe;
- the cultural industries, especially the film and television industry in the UK and Canada.
The geographies of temporary staffing
Building on a large ESRC-funded project (2004-2006), and working with my colleagues Kevin Ward, Jennifer Johns, Katharine Jones, and Jennifer Watts, I am involved in a range of work exploring the geographies of temporary staffing at a variety of spatial scales. This research is brought together in the Geographies of Temporary Staffing Research Unit (GOTSU) here at the University of Manchester. Our extensive website brings together a wide variety of publications and resources on this under-studied yet strategically significant growth sector.
The globalization of retailing
I continue to research globalization within the retail sector and its multifarious impacts, primarily from the perspective of food and general merchandise retailing. This work has both a theoretical dimension – see for example, my 2009 edited collection with Neil Wrigley entitled The Globalization of Retailing – and an empirical aspect, as seen in ongoing research with Yong-Sook Lee (Korea University) into Tesco’s operations in South Korea.
Vancouver’s media industries
Involvement in a project looking at media clusters run by Jönköping International Business School has reinvigorated my interest in Vancouver’s film and television sector. In collaboration with Trevor Barnes (UBC) I am currently conducting a longitudinal study of the sector some 11 years after my first research in Vancouver.
Theorizing global production networks (GPNs)
Building on a large ESRC-funded project that ran from 2000-2003, with my colleagues Peter Dicken, Martin Hess and Henry Yeung, I am involved in continuing to develop the theoretical agenda around global productions networks (GPNs), an approach to analysing global production systems that is garnering growing interest from across the social sciences. For more, see our 2008 special issue of the Journal of Eonomic Geography on Global Production Networks: Debates and Challenges.
Teaching commitments
Year 1:
Tutorial.
Year 2:
Spaces of Economy and Nature (with E. Swyngedouw);
Cuba fieldcourse (with G. Bridge & F. Smyth);
Dissertation Tutor.
Year 3:
Geographies of Work and Employment (with K. Ward).
Current and past postgraduate students
Yue Wang
‘Exploring retail transnational corporations embedding strategies and responses in China’, PhD, from September 2009, SED Graduate Teaching Award (with M. Hess).
Constantinos Antonopoulos
‘Learning from past investment incidents in peripheral regions’, PhD, from September 2009, self-funded (with M. Hess).
Alan Davis
‘China-UK migrant connections’, PhD, from September 2008, BICC Scholarship (with Hong Liu).
Jennifer Watts
‘The institutional context for temporary staffing: a European cross-national comparative study’, PhD, from September 2008, ESRC CASE Studentship (with K. Ward).
Kath Jones
‘The role of temporary staffing agencies in facilitating “accession eight” migration into the UK’, PhD, from September 2007, ESRC CASE Studentship (with K. Ward).
Georgios Tzimas
‘Local regulation and power relations in Greece’s retailing sector’, PhD, from September 2007, Greek Government Scholarship (with M.Hess).
Piotr Niewiadomski
‘Interdependencies between corporate development and spatial expansion of international hotel groups in Central Europe’, PhD, from September 2006, School of Environment and Development Graduate Teaching Fellowship (GTF) (with M. Hess).
Ross Jones
‘Labour organisation and certified spaces in the Vietnamese coffee production network’, PhD, from September 2005, School of Environment and Development Graduate Teaching Fellowship (GTF) (with K. Ward).
David Lier
‘Maximum working class unity? Challenges to local social movement unionism in Cape Town’, PhD, from September 2005 (awarded July 2009), School of Environment and Development Graduate Teaching Fellowship (GTF) (with N. Castree).
Vinny Pattison
‘Low wage labour markets and the potential of living wages in Greater Manchester’, PhD, from September 2004 (awarded July 2009), ESRC CASE Studentship (with K. Ward).
Ian Cook
‘Importing and embedding Business Improvement Districts into England's urban political arena’, PhD, from September 2003 (awarded July 2008), ESRC 1+3 Award (with K. Ward).
Katie May
‘Global Production Networks, European retailers and supply network upgrading in Thailand’, PhD, from September 2002 (awarded December 2006), ESRC +3 Award (with K. Ward).
Jennifer Johns
‘Media networks within and beyond Manchester’, PhD, from September 2000 (awarded December 2004). Winner of the RGS-IBG Economic Geography Research Group PhD Prize, 2004, and now Lecturer in Geography at the University of Liverpool.
Books
Coe, N.M. and Wrigley, N. (2009) (eds) The Globalization of Retailing (2 vols.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.
Coe, N.M., Kelly, P.F. and Yeung, H.W-C. (2007) Economic geography: a contemporary introduction, Blackwell, Oxford.
Castree, N., Coe, N.M., Ward, K. and Samers, M. (2004) Spaces of work: global capitalism and, geographies of labour, Sage, London.
Journal articles (since 2001)
Coe, N.M., Johns, J.L. and Ward, K. (2009) Managed flexibility, corporate strategies and market dynamics in the Swedish temporary staffing industry, European Urban and Regional Studies, 16(1), pp. 65-85.
Yang, Y-R. and Coe, N.M. (2009) The governance of global production networks and regional development: a case study of Taiwanese PC production networks, Growth and Change, 40(1), pp. 30-53.
Coe, N.M., Johns, J.L. and Ward, K. (2009) Agents of casualisation? The temporary staffing industry and labour market restructuring in Australia, Journal of Economic Geography, 9(1), pp. 55-84.
Coe, N.M., Johns, J.L. and Ward, K. (2008) Flexibility in action: the temporary staffing industry in the Czech Republic and Poland, Environment and Planning A, 40(6), pp. 1391-1415.
Coe, N.M., Dicken, P. and Hess, M. (2008) Global production networks: realizing the potential, Journal of Economic Geography, 8(3), pp. 271-295.
Coe, N.M., Johns, J.L. and Ward, K. (2007) Mapping the globalization of the temporary staffing industry, Professional Geographer, 59(4), pp. 503-520.
Coe, N.M. and Wrigley, N. (2007) Host economy impacts of retail TNCs: the research agenda, Journal of Economic Geography, 7(4), pp. 341-371.
Coe, N.M. and Yeung, H.W-C. (2006) Revitalizing economic geography through teaching excellence: some pedagogic reflections, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 30(3), pp. 389-404.
Hess, M. and Coe, N.M., (2006) Making connections: global production networks, standards, and embeddedness in the mobile telecommunications industry, Environment and Planning A, 38(7), pp. 1205-1227.
Coe, N.M. and Lee, Y.S. (2006) The strategic localization of transnational retailers: the case of Samsung-Tesco in South Korea, Economic Geography, 82(1), pp. 61-88.
Bunnell, T. and Coe, N.M. (2005) ‘Re-fragmenting the ‘political’: globalization, governmentality and Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor’, Political Geography, 24(7), pp. 831-849.
Coe, N.M. and Hess, M. (2005) The internationalization of retailing: implications for supply network restructuring in East Asia and Eastern Europe, Journal of Economic Geography, 5(4), pp. 449-473.
Wrigley, N., Coe, N.M. and Currah, A. (2005) Globalizing retail: conceptualizing the distribution-based TNC, Progress in Human Geography, 29(4), pp. 437-457.
Coe, N.M., Hess, M., Yeung, H.W.C., Dicken, P. and Henderson, J. (2004) Globalizing regional development: a global production networks perspective, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 29(4), pp. 468-484.
Coe, N.M. (2004) The internationalisation/globalisation of retailing: towards an economic-geographical research agenda, Environment & Planning A, 36(9), pp. 1571-1594.
Coe, N.M. and Perry, M. (2004) Promoting linkage to foreign transnationals in a ‘tiger’ state: Singapore and the local industry upgrading programme, Environment & Planning C, 22(3), pp. 363-382.
Coe, N.M. and Bunnell, T.G. (2003) ‘Spatialising’ knowledge communities: towards a conceptualisation of transnational innovation networks, Global Networks 3(4), pp. 437-456.
Coe, N.M. and Kelly, P.F. (2002) Languages of labour: representational strategies in Singapore’s labour control regime, Political Geography 21(3), pp. 341-371.
Henderson, J., Dicken, P., Hess, M., Coe, N.M. and Yeung, H.W-C. (2002) Global production networks and the analysis of economic development, Review of International Political Economy 9(3), pp. 436-464.
Bunnell, T.G. and Coe, N.M. (2001) Spaces and scales of innovation, Progress in Human Geography 25(4), pp. 569-589.
Coe, N.M. and Yeung, H.W.C. (2001) Geographical perspectives on mapping globalisation (Introduction to special issue, Mapping globalisation: geographical perspectives on international trade and investment), Journal of Economic Geography 1(4), pp. 367-380.
Coe, N.M. (2001) A hybrid agglomeration? The development of a satellite-Marshallian industrial district in Vancouver’s film industry, Urban Studies 38(10), pp.1753-1775.
Review articles
Coe, N.M. and Wrigley, N. (2006) Business as usual? A response to Palmer, Owens and Sparks, Environment and Planning A, 38(10), pp. 1784-1788.
Coe, N.M. (2005) Putting knowledge in its place (a book review essay), Journal of Economic Geography, 5(3), pp. 381-384.
Coe, N.M. (2003) Servicing the global economy (a book review essay), The Service Industries Journal, 23(4), pp. 150-157.
Edited journal collections
Coe, N.M., Dicken, P. and Hess, M. (guest editors) (2008) Global production networks: debates and challenges, Special Issue of Journal of Economic Geography, 8(3).
Coe, N.M. and Yeung, H.W.C. (guest editors) (2006) Teaching economic geography in the 21st century: challenges and reflections, Special Issue of Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 30(3).
Coe, N.M. and Yeung, H.W.C. (guest editors) (2001) Mapping globalisation: geographical perspectives on international trade and investment, Special Issue of Journal of Economic Geography 1(4).
Book chapters (since 2001)
Coe, N.M. (2009) ‘Global Production Networks’, in R. Kitchin and N. Thrift (eds.) The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Elsevier, Oxford, Volume 4, pp. 556-562.
Coe, N.M. and Wrigley, N. (2009) ‘Introduction: profiling the emerging multi-disciplinary literature on the globalization of retailing and its impacts’, in N.M. Coe and N. Wrigley (eds) The globalization of retailing (2 vols.), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. xiii-xxxviii.
Coe, N.M. (2008) ‘Geographies of global production networks’, in P. Daniels et al. (eds.) An Introduction to Human Geography, Pearson Education, Harlow, pp. 315-338.
Coe, N.M. (2008) The Capitalist Imperative by M. Storper and R. Walker, in P. Hubbard et al. (eds.) Key Texts in Human Geography, Sage, London, pp. 145-152.
Coe, N.M. and Johns, J. (2004) Beyond production clusters: towards a critical political economy of networks in the film and television industries, in Power, D. and Scott, A. (eds) The cultural industries and the production of culture, Routledge, London, pp. 188-204.
Coe, N.M. and Yeung, H. (2004) Grounding global flows: constructing an e-commerce hub in Singapore, amended and reprinted in Graham, S. (ed) The Cybercities Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 354-359.
Coe, N.M., Kelly, P.F. and Olds, K. (2003) Globalization, transnationalism and the Asia Pacific, in Peck, J. and Yeung, H. W-C. (eds) Global Connections, Sage, London, pp. 45-60.
Coe, N.M. (2003) Globalization, regionalization and 'scales of integration': US IT industry investment in Southeast Asia, in Miozzo, M. and Miles, I. (eds) Internationalization, technology and services, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 117-136.
Coe, N.M. (2003) Information highways and digital divides: the evolving ICT landscapes of Southeast Asia, in Chia, L.S. (ed) Southeast Asia Transformed: A Geography of Change, ISEAS, Singapore, pp. 317-353.
Coe, N.M. and Townsend, A.R. (2002) The spatial configuration of inter-firm networks in producer service agglomerations, in McNaughton, R. and Green, M. (eds) Global competition and local networks, Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 278-307.
Coe, N.M. and Yeung, H. (2001) Grounding global flows: constructing an e-commerce hub in Singapore, in Leinbach, T.R. and Brunn, S.D. (eds) Worlds of E-Commerce: Economic, Geographic and Social Dimensions, Wiley, Chichester, pp.145-166.
Recent seminar and conference activity (2008 onwards)
‘Vancouver as media cluster: the cases of video games and film/TV’, invited presentation to the Media Cluster Research Project Meeting (Jönköping International Business School), Radisson Hotel, Covent Garden, London, 24th October 2009.
‘Deepening territorial embeddedness: the case of Tesco in South Korea’, invited paper to symposium on ‘Innovation and transnational retailing’, British Academy of Management Annual Conference, Brighton, UK, 15-17th September 2009.
‘Transnational agencies and the creation of national temporary staffing markets’, paper to the conference on Developing theoretical approaches in labour geography, Department of Geography, University of Liverpool, UK, 11-12th June 2009.
‘The embedded transnational: the globalization of the temporary staffing industry’, invited paper to the Department of Social and Economic Geography Seminar Series, University of Uppsala, 8th May 2009.
‘Global production networks: the developing research agenda’ invited paper to the Department of Human Geography and Sociology Seminar Series, University of Oslo, Norway, 18th February 2009.
‘The globalization of temporary staffing’ invited paper to the Department of Public Administration Seminar Series, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea, 3rd February 2009.
‘The embedded transnational: the internationalisation strategies of the leading transnational temporary staffing agencies’, invited paper to the Department of Geography Seminar Series, Trinity College Dublin, 5th November 2008.
‘Conceptualising the transnational retailer/retailing’, invited paper to the Retailing in the 21st Century Workshop, The Lowry, Salford, 30th September 2008.
‘Global production networks and the “dark sides” of strategic coupling’ (with M. Hess), paper to the ‘Networks in economic geography’ sessions, RGS-Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference, London, UK, 27-29th August 2008.
Co-convenor and chair (with M. Gray and A. Jones) of sessions on New Geographies of the UK Economy, RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, 27-29th August 2008.
Co-organiser of the 4th Summer Institute in Economic Geography (with K. Ward), Manchester, 13-18th July 2008 (for more, see the Summer Institute in Economic Geography homepage).
‘Varieties of temporary staffing: evidence from five countries’ (with K. Ward), invited paper to the ESRC Seminar on ‘Changing Cultures of Competitiveness’, University of Manchester, 9th July 2008.
‘The embedded transnational: the internationalization strategies of the leading 20 transnational temporary staffing agencies’, paper to the ‘Labour market intermediaries and changing economic geographies of work’ session, Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers, Boston, USA, 15-18 April 2008.
‘Ruptures and frictions: (dis)embedding global production networks’ (with M. Hess), paper to the ‘Losing our chains: rethinking the commodity through disarticulations’ session, Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers, Boston, USA, 15-18th April 2008.
Invited panelist in the session ‘Researching practice in the space economy: possibilities and limitations’, Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers, Boston, USA, 15-18th April 2008.
‘Power, networks and scale in the creative industries’, invited paper to the seminar on ‘Creativity and the City: Sector, Cluster or Network?’ Birmingham Business School/Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham, 4th April 2008.