Taking the next step: new frontiers in the interdisciplinary study of finance

Held on 25-26 September 2017

with support from the ESRC, PAIS and the IPE Cluster

Summary

It is difficult to do justice to the breadth and depth of material covered at the WCF workshop. Over two days we had 37 people speaking on 10 different panels, two keynote speeches, two break-away group activities, one large social evening and a lot of coffee and sandwiches.

What defined the workshop was an overt effort at collaboration, support, intellectual curiosity and enjoyment. As early career researchers the aim was to establish a network of colleagues who will push critical studies of finance forward over the next decade.

The panels ranged from a series of talks about ‘Digital Technologies and the rise of Fintech' to a debate about theory and history in a panel about ‘How Does History Matter?’. In between there were presentations on financialisation of the global south - with one participant who was denied a visa by the UK government joining over Skype - to the gendered development of the ECB’s monetary governance.

The workshop programme is available and since all speakers produced papers, anyone interested is welcome to email the authors asking for copies. Looking ahead there are four working groups established that anyone is welcome to join.

The first is developing a share-able, ‘how-to manual’ for conference and workshop organising, trying to institute the collaborative principles established here in our future meetings.

The second is exploring the technicalities of finance and the question of how well versed in technical minutiae critical researches must be to have a useful perspective on the issues we study.

The third examines, rather boldly, the politics of financialisation. How do we keep foregrounded the questions of who gains, through what means and to with what effects when we study finance?

Finally the fourth group is working on the role of finance in development and whether global financial infrastructure is helping or hindering international development.

Keynote speakers

Yuval Millo (Warwick Business School): "Identity as infrastructure in financial markets"
Lena Rethel (Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick): "Capital market development in Southeast Asia: from speculative crisis to spectacles of financialization"

Further information

The Call for Paper and programme can be found here.