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Staff Profile

Dr Matt Davies

Reader in International Political Economy

Background

Role

I joined the staff in Politics at Newcastle University in 2006 as a Lecturer in International Political Economy. Until recently, I was the Director of the Postgraduate Taught Programmes in Politics and Degree Programme Director for the MA in World Politics and Popular Culture.

Qualifications

Ph.D., Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, 1996.

M.A., Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver, 1986.

B.A. in Spanish, Colorado College.

Previous Positions

Visiting Professor (Profesor Adjunto), International Relations Institute, Pontificia Universidade do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2016-present

Assistant Professor, Political Science Department, Pennsylvania State University-Erie, 1998-2005

Visiting Professor, Political Science Department, York University (Toronto), 2002-2004

Visiting Professor, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, 1995-1997.

Memberships

International Studies Association

British International Studies Association

European International Studies Association


 I am also on the editorial board for the Popular Culture and World Politics book series published by Routledge.


I am an Academic Editor for Third World Quarterly.


Languages

English (first language)

Portuguese (basic)

Spanish (fluent)

Research

Research Interests

International Political Economy, Work, and Production

Culture and aesthetics, aesthetics and politics

Other Expertise

popular culture and everyday life

politics of Brazil

Current Work

My current research involves a theoretical critique of contemporary International Political Economy. The problem I address is the tendency of the field to ignore work. But the discipline itself is structured in such a way to devalue work or to treat it as something else -- e.g., a commodity in circulation. Thus I am drawing on cultural theory, aesthetics, theories of the body, and the critique of everyday life to develop a theoretical foundation for understanding what work is, to contribute to a critique of International Political Economy.


I have recently completed work as co-Investigator on an AHRC funded project, TF/TK: Translating Ferro/Transforming Knowledges. This project sets out to establish a field of research of Production Studies -- primarily for Architecture but also for disciplines that have tended to ignore or devalue production, labour, or work -- drawing initially on the Brazilian theorist and historian of architecture, Sérgio Ferro. My publications have covered diverse topics deriving from a consideration of the division of labour in cultural political economy: considering punk rock as international relations and music more methodologically as an approach to International Political Economy; to the consequences of the critique of everyday life for international political economy; to the power relations affecting unprotected workers in international political economy; to studies of precarity in the global south; to a theory of work as articulated in Buffy the Vampire Slayer; to a critique of financialization through an aesthetic theory of work. The theoretical influences I draw most heavily on are Henri Lefebvre, Raymond Williams, Jeffrey Harrod, David Levine, Walter Benjamin, and Antonio Gramsci; but I am also very interested in the aesthetic and political theory of Jacques Rancière. I have also begun to focus some of my questions concerning politics and aesthetics on cities and urbanism, and have published on urban regeneration in Rio de Janeiro as well as on representations of cities in works of fiction.


Future Research

Future research will continue to focus aesthetics and urbanism, and on work, subjectivity, and culture in the global political economy with a specific focus on cities. I am currently completing a study of urban farming and greening in favelas in Rio de Janeiro, and of favelas as sites of resistance to autocratic politics in municipal, national, and transnational contexts. I am also working on conceptual pieces on cities as aesthetic subjects. I aim also continuing my work on music as a method for understanding international politics..


Postgraduate Supervision

I welcome inquiries regarding PhD supervision in the fields of work or industrial relations in the International Political Economy; Cultural Political Economy; Popular Culture and World Politics; or in related fields. 


 Supervisions:

Chen-Wei Wang, From developmentalism to neoliberalism? Taiwan's Economic Transition (co-supervisor with Professor Barry Gills, completed 2011).

Mark Edward, The Presence and Construction of the Caribbean in Electronic Representations (co-supervisor with Dr Simon Philpott, completed 2011)

Can Cinar, The Exercise of Political Authority by the Credit Ratings Agencies: Standard and Poors (co-supervised with Kyle Grayson, MPhil in 2013).

Gerard Thomas, Classes and Markets: Equality during Financial Turmoil (co-supervised with Professor Tony Zito)

Paul McFadden, Work, Power, and the Contemporary Politics of Alienation: The Commodification of Aesthetic, Affect, Emotion, and Immateriality (co-supervised with Kyle Grayson)

Maria Bakola, Crises, Collective Action, and the Political Subject: 21st Century Political Economy and the Formation of Political Subjectivity (co-supervised with Nick Morgan)

Emily Merson (York University, Toronto, Canada), Embodying Ongoing Histories: Self-Determination and Visual Art in World Politics (co-supervised with Anna Agathangelou and David Mutimer of York University)

Ana Clara Telles (PUC-Rio, co-supervised with Mónica Herz) Violência na cidade pos-colonial: imaginações, materialidades, e experiências da violência na cidade de Rio de Janeiro.

Hattie Cansino, The Politics of Paradise: Aesthetic Fantasies of Otherwise within Tourist Economies in Northeast Brazil (co-supervised with Nick Morgan and Jemima Repo)

Daniela Morgan, The Limits of State Sovereignty: An Exploration of Sardinian Minority Nationalism (co-supervised with Simon Philpott and Phil Daniels)

Gustavo Bezerra (PUC-Rio) A Sea of Silences: International Relations and Slavery Politics in the XIX Century Atlantic (co-supervised with Roberto Yamato)

Evie Hill: Designs for Dissensus: Political Posters, Africa, and the Tricontinental Movement (co-supervised with Jorge Catalá-Carrasco and Matt Benwell)

Ben Bowsher, The Poetics of Post-Human Knowledge Making: the inscription of political possibilities and limits in the Anthropocene (co-supervised with Jonathan Pugh and Robert Shaw)


Current PGR supervisions

Ria Jones, The Relationship Between Latvian and German Secular Iconoclasm (1900- Present): 

A Study of the Cultural Geography of Statues and the Relationship between Latvian and German Secular Iconoclasm (co-supervised with Jen Bagelman and Mori Ram)

Luisa de Mesquita (PUC-Rio), Internet and Pop Culture as Elements in the Formation of Political Subjectivities: An Investigation Starting from K-Pop Fandoms (co-supervised with Paula Sandrin)

Marcello Cappucci (PUC-Rio), The Cultural Diplomacy of Mega-Museums in the Arabian Gulf: A Space between Modernity and Neo-Orientalism (co-supervised with Paula Sandrin)

 

 

Teaching

Postgraduate Teaching

POL8005 Theories and Theorists of International Political Economy
POL8048 World Politics and Popular Culture
POL3054 Urban International Relations

Publications