Feminist political economy

We facilitate research and discussion of the gendered dimensions of the global political economy.

About

We focus on the complex ways deeply ingrained gender norms and relations condition and are being conditioned by, political-economic practices and distributional outcomes.

The members share a critique of mainstream economics as a mode of reinforcing and normalising gender norms and power relations and seek to challenge the dominance of its central concepts and methodologies.

They interrogate:

  • feminist, queer and intersectional theoretical approaches to political economy;
  • the gendered nature of the global political economy;
  • the institutions of global economic governance;
  • gender and development;
  • gendered state forms;
  • the gendered nature of environmental problems and responses.

With a focus on macroeconomic structures and their implication for the everyday experiences of citizens.

We have a broad range of expertise, including:

  • social reproduction theories and approaches;
  • the interactions between gender and debt;
  • governance and institutional change;
  • gender and trade;
  • gender, labour, and work;
  • ecofeminism.

This research area is led by Dr Adrienne Roberts. Please contact her directly if you are interested in being included in the group and/or notified about relevant events.

People

  • Dr Sherilyn MacGregor specialises in the interdisciplinary field of gender and environmental politics. Her research explores themes of environmental unsustainability, gender inequality, and theories and practices of citizenship. It critically questions power relations, environmental and social justice, the gendered divisions of labour and responsibility, and strategies for eco-political transformation in affluent societies.
  • Adrienne Roberts' research interests are in the area of feminist international political economy, where she has a particular focus on the gendered relations of finance, debt, development, and trade. She also researches neoliberal and corporate-driven gender equality initiatives, namely in the areas of financial inclusion, entrepreneurship, and trade.
  • Prof. Georgina Waylen's main research interests lie in the fields of comparative politics/political economy. With a focus on gender and politics, international political economy, transitions to democracy, and governance and institutions.
  • Dr Silke Trommer's research interests focus on the politics of global trade, global governance, development, and social movements in the international political economy. One current line of inquiry investigates ongoing global economic policy initiatives to mitigate the gender-differential impacts of trade.
  • Dr Ellie Gore's research expertise are located at the interface between feminist and queer political economy and critical development studies. Their research examines how global development policies and processes impact on gender and sexual power relations in the African context, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality, and decent work.
  • Anna-Maria Köhnke investigates the links between work and wellbeing. She draws from feminist, environmental, and Marxist theories of the political economy to re-centre work in discussions of inequality and socioeconomic policy-making. Her doctoral research explores alternative ways of capturing, comparing, and ultimately improving the quality of work, expanding the study of job quality by including e.g. atypical employment and unpaid reproductive labour.
  • Dr Aliki Koutlou's research interests lie at the intersections of feminist political economy, everyday political economy, and feminist geography. Broadly, she is interested in how social reproduction and its everyday realities, practices and relations (e.g., kinship, friendship) are shaped by gendered and capitalist structures of power at times of crisis and restructuring with a particular focus on semi-peripheral spaces, particularly in Southern Europe. Her current research explores this theme with a focus utilities-based indebtedness in the context of the Greek debt crisis and its aftermath.
  • Ish Tominey-Nevado's research interests are in the governance of crises in the institutions of capitalist social reproduction, particularly in health and welfare services. Their current doctoral research applies a feminist political economy framework to the governance of health in the UK, investigating how neoliberalisation has instituted processes of social depletion and disablement which are reshaping the governance of labour markets, particularly significantly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Arielle Lawson: Taking an archival approach, Arielle's thesis research sets out to research the contested urban, social and economic transformation of New York City and London in the 1970s. Drawing specifically from a rich legacy of social movement materials, it aims to (re)assemble and make visible the theorizing, everyday practices and sites of a feminist spatial politics in and across both cities during this period.
  • Ujan Natik is a PhD researcher whose research investigates how microfinance financialises poverty, the everyday lives of the poor, and their social reproduction needs and influences social divisions based on the intersectional lines of caste, class, and gender. Focusing on India, his project explores how traditional social discrimination and social power relations based on the intersectional paradigms of caste-class-gender has been reproduced and reinforced by the neoliberal processes of financialisation and the proliferation of credit-debt relations by microfinance.
  • Amanda Antonette will be joining us in 2025 as a Visiting Post-Graduate Researcher from the International Relations Program at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. Amanda's reserch analyzes the effects of neoliberal reforms in Brazil on the health system from a gender perspective, particularly focusing on the precarization of care work and women’s work within the health system.
  • Prof Stefanie Wöhl will be joining us in 2025 as Hallsworth Visiting Professor. Stefanie Wöhl is Professor of Political Science at the University of Economics, Management and Finance BFI Vienna (UAS BFI Vienna). Professor Wöhl’s internationally renowned research experience and expertise stretches across the fields of European Integration, international political economy and gender, gendered state and democracy theory, and social reproduction theories. She held the EU Jean Monnet Chair on “Diversity and Social Cohesion in the European Union” from 2019 -2022 and was the Head of European and International Studies at UAS BFI Vienna from 2015 to 2018. Her previous work with Nancy Fraser (2011-2013) addressed questions of democratic accountability within multiple crises, and she has pursued a research agenda focused on uneven developments in the global political economy during her time at the University of Vienna, the University of Kassel, and the International Center for Development and Decent Work (ICDD). Her two main current research projects focus on the financialization of housing and affordable living in Europe (2022-2025), and the new EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (2024-2027).