beyond the crisis? global capitalism in the...

SPERI Conference

Friday 8th November 2019 9.30am-5.15pmBritish Academy, Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH

Beyond the Crisis?Global Capitalism in the 2020s

@SPERIshefuni#SPERIconf19

SPERI 8pp leaflet v3.indd 1 31/10/2019 12:28

On the eve of a new decade this conference will explore how global capitalism is changing, and the implications of this for economic policy and for politics. It brings together leading UK and international academics to present and discuss the latest in political economy research with an audience of people in politics, public policy, research, business, trade unions, civil society and the media.

The Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) is an international research institute at the University of Sheffield committed to developing and promoting new analysis and understanding of contemporary capitalism, and of the major economic and political challenges arising from it.

Conference Programme

9.00 Doors open for registration

9.30 Welcome and introductions - Professor Genevieve LeBaron and Professor Colin Hay, SPERI Directors

9.40 Keynote speech - Andrew Gamble, Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield: Beyond Brexit: The past and future of the UK political economy

10.25 Panel 1: When corporations rule? The business of contemporary capitalism

This panel will explore new issues in global supply chains, digital platforms, corporate ownership and investment and the relationship between business, the state, workers and civil society.

• Genevieve LeBaron – Professor of Politics, University of Sheffield and Director of SPERI

• Eelke Heemskerk – Associate Professor in Political Science, University of Amsterdam

• Maha Rafi Atal – Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Copenhagen Business School

Moderator: Ben Chu, Economics Editor, Newsnight

11.35 Refreshments

12.00 Panel 2: Hard labour? The new organisation of work

This panel will explore new issues concerning labour in global supply chains, automation and artificial intelligence, the gig economy and labour migration.

• Stephanie Barrientos – Professor of Global Development, University of Manchester

• Alex Wood – Lecturer in the Sociology of Work, University of Birmingham

• Valerio De Stefano – Research Professor of Labour Law, University of Leuven

• Manoj Dias-Abey – Lecturer in Law, University of Bristol

Moderator: Jill Ward, Economics Reporter, Bloomberg News

13.15 Lunch (provided for all attendees)


14.15 Panel 3: Beyond finance? Financialisation, economy and society

This panel will explore new issues relating to global financial flows, the scale and impact of the finance sector, the relationship between finance and inequality, and ‘everyday’ financialisation.

• Annina Kaltenbrunner – Associate Professor in the Economics of Globalisation and the International Economy, University of Leeds

• Andrew Baker – Professor of Political Economy, University of Sheffield

• Sandy Hager – Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy, City, University of London

• Adrienne Roberts – Senior Lecturer in International Politics, University of Manchester

Moderator: Phillip Inman, Economics Editor, The Observer

15.30 Refreshments

15.55 Roundtable discussion: Can capitalism be reformed?

This roundtable will discuss key issues in global political economy - including the condition of the UK economy and the impact of Brexit, the climate and environmental crisis, the US-China trade war, the prospects for industrial strategy, and the role of the state in economic policy

• Helen Thompson – Professor of Political Economy, University of Cambridge

• Colin Hay – Professor of Political Analysis, University of Sheffield and Director of SPERI

• Mariana Mazzucato – Professor in the Economics of Innovation & Public Value, University College London

• Heather Boushey – President & CEO, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth

Moderator: Michael Jacobs, Professorial Fellow, SPERI

17.10 Closing remarks

17.15 Close

We invite all participants and speakers to join the SPERI team for a drink and further discussion in the Admiralty pub on the corner of Trafalgar Square


SPERI Conference Beyond the Crisis? Global Capitalism in the 2020s


Maha Rafi AtalMaha Rafi Atal is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Copenhagen Business School where she studies the political economy of corporate power. Her current research interests include the politics of corporate social responsibility; corporate influence in the media; technology platforms and data regulation; and the accountability of corporations under international law. In addition to her academic research, she is an award-winning business and economics journalist, with work published in Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek, the Guardian and the New Statesman, among others. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and the co-founder and Executive Director of Public Business, a non-profit supporting reporting, research and discussion about the wider impact of business actions.

Andrew BakerAndrew Baker is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield. He was formerly Reader in Political Economy and Director of Research in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. He works on the politics of financial governance and macroeconomic policy, and on crises as moments of transformation. He has authored over 50 articles and chapters and two books: The Group of Seven (2006) and Governing Financial Globalization (2005). He has been a visiting scholar at Copenhagen Business School, Griffith University and the Bank for International Settlements. He was formerly the editor of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations and is currently a co-editor of New Political Economy.

Stephanie BarrientosStephanie Barrientos is Professor of Global Development at the University of Manchester. She has researched and published widely on gender, agribusiness and employment in global value chains; trade and labour standards; corporate social responsibility; and fair and ethical trade. She has undertaken research in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. She has advised a large number of companies, NGOs, government and international organisations including Body Shop, Cadbury/Mondelez, DFID, Marks & Spencer, Nike, Oxfam, WIEGO, ILO, and UNCTAD. She is the author of Gender and Work in Global Value Chains: Capturing the Gains? (2019). She is Research Lead on the 2017-22 DFID programme Work and Opportunities for Women (WOW) in global value chains.

Heather BousheyHeather Boushey is the President and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which she co-founded in 2013. Her work focuses on the intersection between economic inequality, growth, and public policy. Politico has twice named her one of the top 50 ‘thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics.’ She previously served as chief economist for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential transition team and as an economist for the Center for American Progress, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Economic Policy Institute. Her latest book is Unbound: How Economic Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It (2019).

Ben ChuBen Chu is the Economics Editor of Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship nightly current affairs programme. Previously he was economics editor of the Independent and the newspaper’s chief leader writer. He has reported on the economy from the US, China, Taiwan, Germany, France, Switzerland and Ireland, and has covered the global financial crisis, the eurozone emergency, the Brexit fallout and Donald Trump’s trade wars. He was nominated for business journalist of the year at the 2015 British Journalism Awards and for business commentator of the year at the 2018 Comment Awards. His first book Chinese Whispers: Why everything you’ve heard about China is wrong (2013) was nominated for International Affairs Book of the Year at the Paddy Power Political Book Awards in 2014.

Conference Speakers


Manoj Dias-AbeyManoj Dias-Abey is Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol. A socio-legal researcher, his current research examines how labour organisations and movements that represent migrant workers utilise the law to further their objectives; investigates the law and political economy of temporary labour migration programmes; and studies how social movements devise innovative forms of regulation to govern global value chains. He has published his research in various leading law journals and reviews, including the International Journal of Labour Law and Industrial Relations and Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. At the University of Bristol, he is involved in the Centre for Law at Work and Migration and Mobilities Bristol (MMB), where he convenes the research challenge on Trade, Capital, Labour.

Andrew GambleAndrew Gamble is Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield, a Professorial Fellow at SPERI, and Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a former editor of The Political Quarterly and New Political Economy. He has published widely on political economy, British politics, and political theory. His books include The Free Economy and the Strong State (1988), Politics and Fate (2000), Between Europe and America: the Future of British Politics (2003), and Crisis Without End? The Unravelling of Western Prosperity (2014). His most recent book is Politics: Why it Matters (2019). In 2005 he received the Isaiah Berlin Prize from the UK Political Studies Association for lifetime contribution to political studies.

Sandy HagerSandy Hager is Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at City, University of London, and a Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Prior to joining City, he held postdoctoral positions at the London School of Economics and Harvard University. His current research focuses on the role of inequality and power in shaping macroeconomic policy, financial regulation, and the biosphere. He is the author of Public Debt, Inequality, and Power: The Making of a Modern Debt State (2016).

Colin HayColin Hay is Director of SPERI at the University of Sheffield and Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po, Paris. His research focuses on the processes of change which characterise the advanced liberal democracies, locating these polities and political economies within their broader comparative and international settings. Professor Hay is the author of many books including, most recently, Exploring Political Legacies (forthcoming, with Stephen Farrall & Emily Grey), Dictionnaire de l’economie politique (2019, with Andy Smith), Diverging Capitalisms (2019, with Daniel Bailey) and The Coming Crisis (2017, with Tom Hunt). He is lead editor of New Political Economy and founding co-editor of Comparative European Politics and British Politics, and a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Science.

Eelke HeemskerkEelke Heemskerk is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and principal investigator at CORPNET, which examines networks of corporate power. His recent research looks at shifts in investment behaviour towards passive asset management, and its political economic consequences in developed and emerging markets. He is member of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, and member of the Amsterdam Center for Inequality Studies. Previously, he held positions the Institute of Strategic Management, Ludwig Maximilians University; the Center on Organizational Innovation, Columbia University; the Germany Institute at UvA; and at the Amsterdam Institute for Labour Studies (AIAS). He has received the Veni Prize for excellent researchers from the Dutch Science Foundation.




Phillip InmanPhillip Inman is Economics Editor of the Observer. He writes about the UK economy, Brexit and global economic trends for both the Observer and the Guardian. Phillip has spent 21 years at Guardian News & Media. Before joining the economics desk in 2010, he was the Guardian’s financial correspondent for five years, reporting on the City before and after the financial crisis. He also writes about personal finance issues, especially pensions, based on five years as deputy editor of Guardian Money. Prior to working on the Guardian he was a reporter on business magazines including Accountancy Age, Business Age and Computer Weekly. His books include The Financial Crisis - How Did We Get Here? (2011) and Managing Your Debt: A Which? Essential Guide (2007).

Michael JacobsMichael Jacobs is Professorial Fellow at SPERI at the University of Sheffield. An economist and political theorist, his research focuses on the development of a post-neoliberal political economy. From 2016-18 he was Director of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice, and principal author of its final report, Prosperity and Justice: A Plan for the New Economy. From 2004-10 he was Special Adviser to Gordon Brown at the Treasury and 10 Downing St. He was formerly General Secretary of the Fabian Society. His books include Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (2016, ed with Mariana Mazzucato), Paying for Progress: A New Politics of Tax for Public Spending (2000) and The Green Economy: Environment, Sustainable Development and the Politics of the Future (1991).

Annina KaltenbrunnerAnnina Kaltenbrunner is Associate Professor in the Economics of Globalisation and the International Economy at Leeds University Business School. Her research focuses on financial integration, currency internationalisation, financialisation and macroeconomic policy in developing and emerging economies and the eurozone. She has published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Development & Change, the Post Keynesian Journal of Economics, and New Political Economy. Dr Kaltenbrunner actively engages with policy making in developing and emerging economies and has conducted consultancy projects for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the European Foundation for Progressive Studies (FEPS) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

Genevieve LeBaronGenevieve LeBaron is Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield and Director of SPERI. Her research focuses on forced labour, modern slavery, and human trafficking in global supply chains, and the effectiveness of government, business, and CSR initiatives to combat it. She is principal investigator of the Global Business of Forced Labour project, which studies the patterns and business dynamics of forced labour in global tea and cocoa supply chains. Her new book, Combatting Modern Slavery: Why Labour Governance is Failing and What We Can Do About It is forthcoming in 2020. Professor LeBaron has been included in the 2018 UK Top 100 Corporate Modern Slavery Influencers and the 2017 Global Top 100 Human Trafficking & Slavery Influence Leaders lists. She is an editor of Review of International Political Economy.

Mariana MazzucatoMariana Mazzucato is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). Her books include The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths (2013) and The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (2018), which was a 2018 Strategy & Business Book of the Year. She won the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values. Professor Mazzucato advises policy makers on innovation-led inclusive growth and is currently a Special Advisor for the EC Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.


Adrienne RobertsAdrienne Roberts is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester. She specialises in feminist international political economy with a particular focus on the gendered relations of finance, debt, development, and trade. Her current research projects include a large multi-year study on the gendered relations of debt and finance in contemporary and historical perspective. She has published extensively in academic journals in the fields of international political economy, international relations, gender studies and development studies. Her most recent books are Feminist Global Political Economies of the Everyday (2018), Handbook of the International Political Economy of Gender (2018), and Gendered States of Punishment and Welfare (2017). She is an editor of New Political Economy.

Valerio De StefanoValerio de Stefano is the BOF-ZAP Research Professor of Labour Law at the Institute for Labour Law and the Faculty of Law of the University of Leuven. He works on labour and technology. His current research focuses on artificial intelligence, people analytics and the workplace, and platform-based work in the gig economy. From to 2007 to 2014 he worked in the employment practice of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. From 2014 to 2017, he was an officer of ILO, the International Labour Organisation, where he conducted research on non-standard forms of employment. At Leuven he coordinates a group of researchers working on new forms of work and manages several grants awarded by national and European research institutions. He has been consultant for the ILO, several EU institutions, and national governments.

Helen ThompsonHelen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge and Deputy Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is a regular panelist on the podcast Talking Politics. She researches the political economy and geopolitics of western polities. Since 2008 she has worked on questions generated by the 2008 financial crash and the eurozone crisis, including their historical origins in the fallout of the economic and political crises of the 1970s. Her recent work covers the political economy of oil, Brexit and the eurozone crisis. Her most recent book is Oil and The Western Economic Crisis (2017). Her article ‘Inevitability and contingency: the political economy of Brexit,’ won the 2017 prize for best article in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

Jill WardJill Ward is an economics reporter at Bloomberg News in London, where her coverage focuses on the UK, trade, Brexit and the Bank of England. She spent three months in the New Delhi bureau covering transport and working on a project for Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum last year. Originally from Montreal, Canada, she studied economics, history and politics at Durham University.

Alex J. WoodAlex Wood is Lecturer in the Sociology of Work at Birmingham University and a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute. His research focuses on the impact of technology on work and employment; the relationships between industrial relations, union renewal and emerging forms of workplace representation; and new patterns of class and inequality. His most recent research has investigated worker voice, organisation and collective action in the gig economy as part of the iLabour project at Oxford University. Previously he researched the impact of platform work and the gig economy in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. He is author of Despotism On Demand: How Power Operates in the Flexible Workplace (2020).




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@ SPERIshefuni

Sheffield Political Economy Research InstituteThe University of SheffieldInterdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences219 PortobelloSheffield S1 4DP, UK

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beyond the crisis? global capitalism in the...

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