POLITICS, ECONOMIES & PLACE
RESEARCH GROUP
THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND
NEW ZEALAND
October News Update
Associate Professor Tom Baker co-authors a piece in The Conversation on how Micahel Bloomberg’s brand of philanthropy shapes city governments
Project: Global Management Consultancies (GMCs) and Extrastate Knowledge Infrastructures
Reading Group
Every other Wednesday during semester time, PEP’s Reading Group meets to unpack two readings that have been selected by postgraduate students. Here you can find what we’ve tackled so far and some related readings.
Blog
Find out the latests on PEP members and their work here
WHAT WE DO
We study the ways in which political and economic practices are entangled in their spatial contexts, from cities and regions, to the nation and beyond. Politics (how we make collective decisions) and economy (how we steward resources to generate livelihoods and reproduce society) are central to the organisation of social and cultural life. We examine their spatiality as both source and outcome of social change at multiple scales. Our staff and postgraduate students research assemblages of practices and actors in both micro (eg. events, organisations) and macro (eg. cities, regions, nations) spaces. We draw on insights from urban, economic and political geography, and are particularly interested in how post-structural ideas and practice-centred methodologies can enrich political economy critique of social change.
OUR RESEARCH AREAS INCLUDE:
- Policy and policy-making (urban, economic, social)
- Markets and market-making
- Political and economic knowledge production
- Intermediaries, calculative practice, and political-economic agency
- Advocacy and activism
WHO WE ARE
The Politics, Economies and Place research group aims to create friendly spaces for the sharing of ideas and, ideally, baked goods. We are a group of postgraduate students and staff at the University of Auckland. Our research interests are diverse, but we find common ground in how the stuff of politics and/or economies ‘take place’. Check out what we’ve been doing on our Publications page and Blog. You can also hear from a few of our former postgraduate students on our Our Graduates page.
OUR READINGS
Every fortnight during semester time, PEP meets to discuss texts related to our research areas. Our Reading Group is student-driven, which means that for each meeting our post-graduate students choose a text they have found to be particularly challenging or inspiring. Have a look at our Reading Group page to see some of the texts that have been discussed in Reading Group so far.
OUR WRITINGS
Check out our Publications page to see our recent published work. You can also find the theses and dissertations of our graduates on the Our Graduates page.