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PODCAST

SPERI Presents...

"SPERI Presents…" is a podcast taking on the big questions in political economy for scholars, students and publics within and beyond the discipline.We also host "New Thinking in Political Economy", an ongoing series with monthly episodes. Dr Remi Edwards is joined by authors of new research to explore the motivations behind, contributions and implications of their work for understanding power and politics in the global economy.The first limited series was "Lessons in Power". Professor Michael Jacobs

government politics

All Episodes

44:59

New Thinking: Capitalist Value Chains w/ Benjamin Selwyn

SPERI Presents... ·

2025/10/23

How important is exploitation in the organisation of global supply chains? How do they drive geopolitical conflict and ecological destruction while depressing wages? How does the capitalist state drive and uphold capitalist accumulation? What does US-China rivalry mean for value chains?Benjamin Selwyn is Professor of International Relations and International Development at University of Sussex. He joins Dr Remi Edwards to discuss his new book Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature

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58:19

Live: Is organised violence central to capitalism? @...

SPERI Presents... ·

2025/07/15

How are technologies used by militaries to enact organised violence produced? How are post-industrial regions of the UK becoming dependent on the supply chains of the global war industry? What narratives enable organised violence perpetrated by elites, and how are they resisted? What is the role of everyday tedium and mundanity in producing such violence?Dr Joanna Tidy is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at University of Sheffield. Dr Beryl Pong is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the Centre for the

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37:48

New Thinking: Big Pharma w/ Owain Williams

SPERI Presents... ·

2025/04/23

A tiny number of huge companies dominate the pharmaceutical industry, making extraordinary profits in the process. All the while, the poorest people around the world struggle to access medicines they need to survive. What does the COVID-19 pandemic tell us about Big Pharma? What's the problem with a cartelized global market? What role does Bill Gates play in solving (or reproducing) the big challenges of global health? Is there a political economy explanation for rising anti-vaccine sentiment

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41:28

Crisis Point: Climate Crisis w/ Jeremy Green

SPERI Presents... ·

2025/04/10

Climate change is one of the most urgent and existential challenges to emerge in capitalism's history. It threatens to undermine the basic conditions of capitalist accumulation not to mention human life itself. And yet, emissions continue to rise. Why? Climate change is often termed the climate crisis, but what does it actually have in common with historic crisis events like the 1930s or 1970s? What does this tell us about the possibility of resolving it through global energy transition? What can we

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36:18

Crisis Point: Populism w/ Michael Bray

SPERI Presents... ·

2025/04/07

Does the rise of populisms of both Left and Right varieties constitute a crisis in democracy? Is this a new phenomenon or has there always been a contradictory relationship between capitalism and democracy? How does the erosion of democratic norms relate to other crises in the political economy? Why does the Left seem so incapable of effectively confronting this multitude of challenges?Michael Bray is Professor of Philosophy at Southwestern University. He joins Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley to

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34:03

Crisis Point: 2008 w/ Scott Lavery

SPERI Presents... ·

2025/03/20

The 2008 financial crisis is the most totemic political-economic event in living memory. What were the causes of the crash? How does it relate to previous crises in capitalism, like 1970s stagflation? Many believed that 2008 signalled the end of neoliberalism. How did neoliberalism endure in its immediate aftermath? Does China's alternative economic model represent a serious challenge to neoliberalism almost two-decades on? How should we make sense of the post-2008 multipolarity in global politics

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39:02

Crisis Point: Asian Financial Crisis w/ Jomo Kwame...

SPERI Presents... ·

2025/03/17

What does the 1997 East Asian Financial Crisis tell us about capitalism and crisis more generally? Should we include it alongside the 1930s, 1970s and 2008 as a major crisis in the history of capitalism? Or does it simply an early symptom of the conditions that eventually gave rise to 2008? Jomo Kwame Sundaram is a Malaysian economist holding such positions including Visiting Senior Fellow at Khazanah Research Institute, Visiting Fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, and

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37:13

Crisis Point: 1970s Stagflation w/ Colin Hay

SPERI Presents... ·

2025/03/13

The 1970s crisis of stagflation is often represented as a crisis of capitalism inciting transformation from post-war social democracy to neoliberalism, but was that really how the crisis was experienced at the time? Was capitalism itself at risk, or was this just a crisis in capitalism and of British politics? Is social democracy the right way to understand the post-war period? Were the unions as powerful as we're told? Did Thatcherism decisively solve the problem of inflation as is claimed? Given

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32:27

Crisis Point: Debating Crisis w/ Dillon Wamsley &...

SPERI Presents... ·

2025/03/06

Why is crisis a core feature of capitalism? What role does crisis play in the history of capitalism? How useful is crisis as a concept for understanding contemporary political-economic upheavals, for both scholars and activists?Are we in the midst of a crisis or new era of polycrisis or permacrisis? How can we understand our location within it?Chris Saltmarsh is a postgraduate researcher at University of Sheffield. Dillon Wamsley is a postdoctoral researcher the Sheffield Political Economy Research

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38:14

New Thinking: Climate Scenarios w/ Ben Clift &...

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/11/27

Despite decades of public knowledge about climate change and well-established international governance institutions designed to facilitate global energy transition, emissions continue to rise as climate breakdown intensifies. Why is climate modeling so important and what are technocrats getting wrong? What are the assumptions underlying these models of future climate scenarios and how do they misinform policy makers about the true costs of the climate (in)action? How can a constructivist approach to

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36:07

New Thinking: Queer Activism in Ghana w/ Ellie Gore

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/10/28

Queer men bear a disproportionate burden of HIV in Africa, but how do they experience the global development agenda of sexual health and sexual rights? What does a political economy approach bring to research on global development? How does queer political economy build on feminist approaches to help us locate contemporary Ghanian politics in histories of capitalism and colonialism? What are the lived experiences of queer men in Ghana in this context and what are their priorities in the struggle for

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31:18

New Thinking: What is Political Economy?

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/09/24

Political economists are inspired to understanding the major challenges that face our society today: climate breakdown and global environmental change, workers' rights across global supply chains, the intensification of war, the rise of the far-right, public health crises and so much more. But what exactly is political economy? Is it a discipline, sub-discipline, field, approach, all of these, or none? How does it help us understand capitalism, history, our everyday lives?Professor Andrew Hindmoor

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43:45

Lessons in Power: Climate Change w/ Michael Jacobs

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/07/26

Starmer's Labour has secured an overwhelming majority in what will surely be one of the most significant Parliamentary terms in the history of British climate politics. The clock is ticking on decarbonisation, but the new Labour government appears reluctant to take full advantage of the chance to be forever remembered as climate heroes. Will it make the most of this opportunity?Michael Jacobs, now Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sheffield, was a member of the Council of Economic

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41:08

Lessons in Power: Policy Innovation w/ Geoff Mulgan

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/07/26

Keir Starmer's new government must now walk the line between the short-termist incentives of Parliamentary politics and the imperative to tackle the medium and long-term social issues that Labour has been elected to solve. What mode of governance can effectively strike this balance?Sir Geoff Mulgan, now Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London, was Director of the Performance and Innovation Unit, Head of the Strategy Unit and Head of

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30:03

Lessons in Power: Parliamenatary Reform w/ Meg Russell

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/07/26

It would appear that every Opposition party promises sweeping House of Lords reform while every government roundly fails to make any meaningful progress in that domain. What challenges will Keir Starmer's new Labour government face when it comes to constitutional and Parliamentary reform?Meg Russell, now Professor of Politics at University College London and Director of the UCL Constitution Unit, was Special Adviser to Robin Cook as Leader of the House in 2001-3.She joins Michael and Mems to discuss

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36:01

Lessons in Power: Public Services w/ Nick Pearce

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/07/19

Keir Starmer inherits a series of broken public services after fourteen years of austerity and economic stagnation. Can the new Labour government turn them around while remaining so reluctant to invest public money? Nick Pearce, now Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Institute of Policy Research, University of Bath, was Head of the No 10 Policy Unit 2007-10 and Special Adviser at the Dept of Education and Employment and Home Office (2001-7). He joins Michael and Mems to discuss New

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32:34

Lessons in Power: Poverty w/ Carey Oppenheim

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/07/19

A key issue in Labour's 2024 general election campaign was the conflict between the moral imperative to end child poverty and the party's stringent fiscal rules. The debate over whether Starmer's new government will end the two-child limit in Universal Credit is already a live issue during his first period as Prime Minister.Carey Oppenheim, now an independent consultant on early years policy and adviser to the Nuffield Foundation, was Special Advisor to Tony Blair in the Number 10 Policy Unit from

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41:27

Lessons in Power: International Development w/ Clare...

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/07/19

Foreign aid spending has long been a political football kicked around by the major parties. Now that Keir Starmer has formed a new Labour government, what will its approach to international development tell us about the UK's place in the world?Clare Short was Secretary of State for International Development from 1997-2003 under Tony Blair. She joins Michael and Mems to discuss overseas development and foreign policy, including the founding of the Department for International Development, its

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32:34

Lessons in Power: Immigration Policy w/ David Blunkett

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/07/09

Debates about migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats dominated the 2024 general election. The Labour government will now face pressure from all sides to resolve the issue decisively but humanely.Lord David Blunkett was Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1997-2001), Home Secretary (2001-4) and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (2005).He joins Michael and Mems to discuss his time at the Home Office and immigration policy during Tony Blair's administration. They

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37:40

Lessons in Power: Managing No 10 w/ Sally Morgan &...

SPERI Presents... ·

2024/07/09

Labour is now in power for the first time in over 14 years. How does Keir Starmer hit the ground running? What are the challenges of running a government after so long away from 10 Downing St?Baroness Sally Morgan, now Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, was Tony Blair’s Director of Government and Political Relations at No 10 from 1997 to 2005. Gavin Kelly, now Executive Chair and formerly Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation, was Deputy Chief of Staff at No 10 under Gordon Brown from

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22 results

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