Political Economy
The Political Economy Research Group apply spatially sensitive theories and methods to the study of economic, social and political phenomena, broadly defined.
Urban and rural transformations
...deals with the dynamics of change within cities, the reconstitution of rural places, and the postcolonial evolution of inequality.
Environmental transformations
...investigates political economies and ecologies of the nature-society nexus, as well as climate politics and governance.
Transformations to labour and the body
…mobilises ‘gender’ as a substantive concern and lens through which to explore the changing relations between the social, cultural, political and economic dimensions of contemporary capitalist formations.
The Political Economy Research Group is home to sixteen associated faculty and many post-doctoral researchers, graduate students, and undergraduates.
Embodied geopolitics of Islam
This project – which is a collaboration between Dr Negar Elodie Behzadi,, Dr Lucia Direnberger, CNRS (France), and Malika Abdulvasieva (researcher in Tajikistan) explores how state policies that attempt to control and regulate Islam in Muslim majority countries impact Muslim women's lives.
The UK geography of the financial impact of the COVID-19 crisis and response
Led by Prof Julie MacLeavy, this project distinguishes priorities for urban and regional policy using an analysis of social and spatial disparities in COVID-19 outcomes.
Governing the transboundary environmental commons in Southeast Asia
Prof Jonathan Rigg is co-PI on this Singapore Social Science Research Council funded project focusing on the governance, conservation and sustainable management of common pool resources that cannot be neatly contained within discrete administrative units or governed by individual countries.
Peak Urban
Prof Sue Parnell is Deputy PI on a GCRF funded project exploring the complexities of urban transformation. The empirical work is grounded in Beijing, Bangalore, Cape Town and Medellin.