Mareike Beck

Associate Professor in International Political Economy

Mareike.Beck@warwick.ac.uk

Advice and Feedback Hours:

Tuesdays 16.30 - 17.30 on Teams, please book hereLink opens in a new window.

Thursdays 14.00 - 15.00 D1.07 Social Sciences, please book hereLink opens in a new window

I am Associate Professor in International Political Economy. Previously, I was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at King’s College London, after having finished my PhD at the University of Sussex.

My research agenda focuses on the drivers and socio-economic impacts of financialisation at the global and everyday level. My work has addresses this in three inter-related areas.

First, I am interested in a social history of global finance. My book Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt (Cambridge University Press) develops a novel conceptualisation, extroverted financialisation, to frame the US Americanisation of global finance. I am particularly interested in the uneven nature of the USD-based global financial architecture, and how this has shaped financial globalisation, innovations in on- and offshore finance, and financial instability.

Secondly, using a feminist political economy approach to understand gender and inequality. I investigate how everyday asset management and global asset management interact to produce various forms of asset-based inequalities in financialised economies.

My third area of interest concerns creative and performative methodologies for knowledge exchange and impact. I regularly engage with civil society groups and local communities. For example, in May 2023, I directed and performed in an aerial acrobatics circus show that performed feminist political economy theorising of homes in their dual function as (1) an everyday living space and (2) a global financial asset.

Watch my mini-documentary about housing inequality that uses my Brighton Fringe Aerial Circus show to talk about homes, debt and political economy.

Publications

• Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD DebtLink opens in a new window. Cambridge University Press
• Beck, M, Knafo, S & Sgambati, S 2023 Leveraging financial claims: transatlantic bank struggles and the power of US finance. In B Braun & K Koddenbrock (eds), Capital Claims: Power and Global Finance. Routledge
• Beck, M 2022 Extroverted financialization: how US finance shapes European banking. Review of International Political Economy
• Beck, M 2022 The managerial contradictions of extroverted financialization: the rise and fall of Deutsche Bank. Socio-Economic Review
• Beck, M & Knafo, S 2020 Financialization and the Uses of History. In: Braun, B and Koddenbrock, K (eds): Capital claims: The political economy of global finance, Routledge
• Beck, M & Germann, J 2019 Managerial power in the German model: the case of Bertelsmann and the antecedents of neoliberalism Globalizations.

Journal articles in progress:

• Everyday Asset Struggles and the New Logics of Inequality (New Political Economy, R&R), part of SI Asset Struggles: Understanding conflict in contemporary capitalist societies; eds. Théo Bourgeron and Philipp Golka).

• (S)tra(te)gic Banking: Europe's Geopolitical Turn and the Problems of TBTF (Competition and Change, R&R), together with Elsa Massoc.

• Leveraging Pensions: The Epistemic Politics of Liability-Driven Investment Strategie (Journal of European Public Policy, R&R), together with Scott James.
• Subprime and the Financialisation of Predatory Lending, together with Samuel Knafo.
• USD hegemony: The Role of the Eurodollar Markets in European Integration, part of SI on the Global Credit View, eds Steffen Murau and Mark Schwartz.

Teaching and Supervision

• Foundations of Political Economy (PO133, 1st year)
• International Political Economy: States, Markets and Global Capitalism (PO230, 2nd year)

I am open to supervising undergraduates and postgraduates dissertations as well as doctoral candidates on key issues in global political economy. I particularly welcome the following themes:

• Global Finance and Banking
• Feminist Political Economy of the Household / Everyday
• Inequality
• Housing and Real Estate
• Comparative and European Political Economy
• Historical Methods and Radical Historicism

Media

Listen to this podcast about how concepts of inequality, homes, and debt are turned into aerial acrobatics:

and this podcast on knowledge exchange through aerial acrobatics circus, including audience responses:

See here for a feature by the New Internationalist.