New Economic Geographies

Economic systems of value, exchange and circulation

Research has explored the creation, transformation and destruction of commodity value in the cultural, finance and resource-based industries. Path-breaking studies include work on the geographies of second-hand exchange and practices of disposal, studies of underwriting and actuarial epistemic communities’ constitution of value in the life assurance industry, work on the organisational role of global headhunting firms in the intermediation of elite labour markets in the world economy, and an examination of the digital reorganisation of the music industry. Research on regional development and coal industry restructuring from the UK to Ukraine (Donbas), and resource (oil, gas and water) competition in Central Asia and the Caucasus, reveal the role of transfers of knowledge in shaping processes of neoliberalisation and new forms of indigenous capitalism in transition economic systems.

Recent new research projects are now investigating:

• Economic inter-dependence and comparitive regional dynamics in developed and developing economies: trade and regional trajectories in China and the EU
• Shrinking Smart: Governance of shrinkage within a European context (EU Framework VII) [website]
• The fashion spaces of Savile Row