Mareike Beck

Associate Professor in International Political Economy

Mareike.Beck@warwick.ac.uk

Advice and Feedback Hours:

Thursdays 15.30 - 17.30 on Teams, please book hereLink opens in a new window.

Or e-mail if you need a different time.

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. I am co-editor for New Political Economy, associate editor for Finance and SocietyLink opens in a new window and I co-convened BISA-IPEGLink opens in a new window from 2022-2024.

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

First, I am interested in the socio-political history of global finance. My book Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD Debt Link opens in a new window(Cambridge University Press) develops a novel conceptualisation, extroverted financialisation, to frame the US Americanisation of global finance. It re-tells the history of European and German financialisation from the perspective of European banks. I portray them as active participants in offshore financial markets and in generating their own USD dependency, albeit from a peripheral position. More generally, I am 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. See an LSE book review by Juvaria Jafri hereLink opens in a new window.

Secondly, using a feminist political economy approach to understand gender and inequality, I investigate how everyday and global finance interact within households and housing 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

• Beck, M, 2025. Extroverted Financialisation: Banking on USD DebtLink opens in a new window. Cambridge University Press
• Beck, M., 2026. Everyday asset struggles: debt work, social reproduction and the (new) logics of inequality. New Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2026.2685197
• Beck, M, Massoc, EC, 2026. (S)tra(te)gic banking Europe’s geopolitical turn and the contradictory trajectory of TBTF banks. Competition & Change. https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294261448607
• Beck, M, James, S, 2026. Systemic Pensions: The Epistemic Politics of Liability-Driven Investment Strategies. Journal of European Public Policy. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2026.2642990 
• 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.

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.