Publications and projects
Find out about our research projects and further resources for political economy research at The University of Manchester.
Projects
Pushing the boundaries of social reproduction research
Social reproduction research, rooted in Marxist-feminism, examines the work and practices that sustain life and society, particularly the often-overlooked realm of unpaid household labour. It highlights inequalities in the division of labour and explores how reproduction and production are shaped by structural, cultural, and ecological conditions. A 2024 workshop at The University of Manchester, led by Adrienne Roberts and Sara Stevano, gathered scholars to push the field forward. They focused on extending research into land and food, health, finance and debt, infrastructure, and migration, while addressing methodological gaps through five thematic briefs.
Methodological briefs
This project was formerly funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme and focuses on the construction of International Political Economy as an academic discipline. Our website is the main depository for a digital talking histories archive that we hope will provide insights into the foundation and early debates in International Political Economy that go beyond those accessible through existing published literature.
The discipline of International Political Economy is usually thought to have originated in the early 1970s as a departure from International Relations and Economics as neither discipline was able to fully comprehend key changes in the global economy, such as the break from Dollar-Gold convertibility and the end of the Bretton Woods system. Scholars who were part of in the vanguard of the new discipline in the 1970s and 80s are now reaching the end of their careers, are in retirement or in some cases have already passed away.
We hope that it will be of use to both academic researchers in International Political Economy and as an open educational resource.
Publications
Feminist political economy
- Roberts, A. (2025). "‘Protecting people’s lives and livelihoods’: gender, social reproduction and fiscal policy during the UK COVID-19 crisis." Global Political Economy: 1-22.
- Gore, E. (2024). “Migrant sex work beyond slavery and trafficking: sex work, unfree labour and the crisis of social reproduction in Ghana”. Geoforum, 150, Article 103975.
- Gore, E. (2024). Between HIV prevention and LGBTI rights: the political economy of queer activism in Ghana. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Gore, E. (2024). “Towards a trans-inclusive critical international political economy? Or why trans oppression matters for understanding capitalism and social reproduction”. Capital & Class, 49(1), 123-144.
- Koutlou, A. (2025) Lived experiences of utilities-based indebtedness in Greece: Tracing the afterlives of austerity. The Geographical Journal, 191, e12537.
- Gore, E. (2025). “Capitalist crisis and the transnational anti-gender movement: making sense of gay moral panics through queer political economy”. Globalizations, 1-19.
- Gore, E. (2025). “Colonial afterlives in the global cocoa supply chain: Sharecropping, labour exploitation, and gendered (re)production”. Review of International Political Economy, 1-30.
- Gore, E. (2024). “The political economy of HIV prevention in Ghana: peer education, queer social reproductive labor, and the global development industry”. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 26(2), 306–328.
- Phipps, A. and R. Alsop (2025). "Transgender equality and the UK Supreme Court: a UK Gender Studies community roundtable." Journal of Gender Studies 34(7): 891-902. (contributions by Ursula Maki, Aliki Koutlou, Silke Trommer, Adrienne Roberts, Magdalena Rodekirchen and Ellie Gore).
Theoretical political economy
- Charnock G & Ribera-Fumaz, R (2025) ‘The urbanization of capitalism: The contemporary relevance of David Harvey’s Marxism’, Reimagining Urban Marxisms, edited by F Biagi (Routledge), pp. 22-38.
- O’Neil, J. (2024) 'Pluralism, ecology and planning' Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics. 17, 27-48.
- Clarke, C. and Roberts, A. (2024) ‘Global finance and the everyday’ in E. Hannah and J. Ravenhill eds, Global Political Economy 7th Ed, pp. 231-51. Oxford University Press.
- Gore, E. (2024). ‘Global production and unfree labour’. In E. Hannah, & J. Ravenhill eds, Global Political Economy 7th Ed, pp. 161-83. Oxford University Press.
- Gore, E. (2025). “Political economy”. In R. Cover, & C. E. Newman (Eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Queer Studies. Edward Elgar, 279-282.
- O’Neil, J. and Salter, J. (2025), “Hume, republicanism and relations to posterity” in S. Gardiner ed. The Oxford Handbook of Intergenerational Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.178-196.
Critical approaches to capitalism
- Charnock, G. et al. (2026) The politics of late urban entrepreneurialism, Routledge.
- Bunnell, T. et al (incl. Charnock, G.) (2025) “The citizen and the smart city: A global comparison of institutional logics”, Urban Geography, 1-21.
- Bruff, Ian (2025) “The Big Society’s success in England: Neoliberalism as recomposition of public-institutional spaces”, Competition & Change, 29:2, 244-62.
- Trommer, Silke (2024) “The cultural foundations of trade policy: Competitive free trade and the UK-Australia free trade agreement”, with James Scott, Review of International Studies, 1-20.
- Loginovic, J. & Shields S. (2025) “UN 2030 agenda and the SDGs: Hybrid institutional complexes as hegemony building?” Global Policy 16(4): 724-730.
- Flavell, J. (2025) “Face to face fundraising and the dialectics of appearance”, New Political Economy, 30(2): 194-210.
- Charnock, G. et al (2025) "Barcelona en Comú: Openings, Closures and a Bittersweet Legacy", Socialist Register 2025: Openings and Closures, Vol. 61, edited by G Albo & S Maher, pp. 68-81.
Capitalism and environmental sustainability
- Death, Carl (2025) African climate futures, Oxford University Press.
- Contreras, S.B. et al (incl Trommer, S.) (2025) “Capturing the disruptive nature of green energy transitions: A political economy approach”, Energy Research & Social Science, v. 123, 104039.
- Best, J., et al. (2025) “Climate change governance by central banks in an era of interlocking crises”. Environmental Politics, 1–27.
- Death, Carl (2024) “Narrating transitions to low carbon futures: The role of long-term strategies (LTS) in fossil fuel producing emerging economies”, New Political Economy, 29, 4 , pp. 628-645.
- Death, Carl (2024) “Unfamiliar families and disturbing climate futures”, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 26, 2, pp. 264-285.
- O’Neil, J. (2024) “Incommensurability, environment and planning” Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics. 17, 2024, 117-124.
- Gore, E. (2024). ‘Internal migration and the sustainable development goals’ in The Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals, pp. 390-403, Edward Elgar.