Economic Geographies
Geography at Newcastle host one of the largest and most dynamic groups of economic geographers in the world.
Overview
Newcastle University is home to one of the world’s largest Economic Geography research clusters. Enlarged and diversified through multiple strategic appointments in recent years, it also encompasses the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary.
Our research challenges economic and policy orthodoxies, and explores viable possibilities for progressive change amongst economically marginalised people and places. Extending our longstanding engagement with local communities in the UK’s NE region, recent work has interrogated socioeconomic (dis)advantage and sustainability challenges across India, Kenya, Malawi, China, Singapore, Brazil and South Africa.
Our interdisciplinary intellectual partnerships span development studies, political economy, evolutionary economics, spatial analytics, critical urban studies and planning.
Our distinctive work is also advanced through diverse engagement with varied stakeholders including: ILO, UN, UK Food Standards Agency, Citibank, Northern Gas Networks, Northern PowerGrid, Malawi Ministry of Health, Kenya Institute for Livestock Research, and UK Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. We also seek to advance local communities within our region, challenging characterisations of the NE as ‘peripheral’ and helping refine policy responses as part of the UK government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda
Our distinctive brand of Economic Geography is advanced through 6 major work streams:
Research in this theme advances more socially and spatially inclusive forms of economic theory; engages with historically marginalised economic actors and places; and seeks to demystify the complex geographical connections between economic circuits of value, culture, politics and social reproduction, in pursuit of more effective policy interventions. Using a range of theoretical and methodological approaches spanning political economy, cultural economy, feminist economy and digital economy, this work challenges the peculiar economic geography of Economic Geography through new engagements with people and places beyond the formal economic spaces of the western ‘core’, and through new boundary-crossing intellectual partnerships with colleagues in other disciplines. The ambition of this research is to identify the geographical possibilities for more socially progressive economic outcomes.
- Holistic local, regional and urban development and socially inclusive growth (Dawley, Hughes, James, Jarvis, Mackinnon, Pike)
- Globalising economic geography, provincializing ‘universal’ economic theory (Hughes, James, Lim, Franklin)
- Feminising economic geography, economies of production and social reproduction (Hughes, James, Jarvis, Pollard)
- Digitally-mediated economic geographies (Hughes, James, Pollard, Powells)
Research in this theme interrogate the uneven geographies of money and finance, how they are organized and institutionalized, and how they create, assemble, destroy and distribute assets, liabilities and risk. Using a range of conceptual, theoretical and methodological approaches, work in this theme examines the growing and uneven power of money and its constitutive significance for everyday economic, social, political and cultural life. The aim in this research is to better understand and explain the economic geographies of contemporary finance and its alternatives.
- Geographies of financial crisis, debt and austerity (Coombes, James, Loomis, Mackinnon, Pike, Pollard)
- Uneven geographies of financialisation (Keenan, Loomis, O’Brien, Pike, Pollard)
- Finance and local, regional and urban development (Dodds, James, Lim, Pike, Pollard)
- Evolution and change in financial systems, structures and institutions (Coombes, Dawley, Loomis, Pike, Pollard)
- Alternative financial institutions, sources and forms of value (James, Loomis, Pike, Pollard)
Economic geography at Newcastle is renowned for its longstanding and innovative work on institutions and governance. Building upon the idea that economies are not self-regulating entities but subject to broader forms of social and political regulation, research in this theme is concerned with diverse processes and practices of economic governance in the context of geographically uneven development. Informed by a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, this work seeks to bring together territorial and relational understandings of space and place to interrogate evolving governance arrangements across a range of geographical scales and sites. While much of our research is focused upon state institutions, it is also attentive to the emergence of new forms of civic activism and engagement.
- Economic evolution, institutional adaptation and path creation (Dawley, Evans, MacKinnon, Pike)
- Decentralisation, austerity and state rescaling (Dawley, Lim, Loomis, MacKinnon, Pike, O’Brien)
- Inclusive governance and ‘left behind’ places (Franklin, Kempton, James, MacKinnon, Pike)
- Civic universities and anchor institutions (Goddard, Kempton)
- Innovation and experimentation in institutions, decentralised governance and place-based industrial policies (Goddard, Kempton, Lim, MacKinnon, Pike, O’Brien, Wang)
The geographies of innovation are a longstanding research strength at Newcastle. Scrutinising the notion that the relationships between research, technology and innovation are more open, networked and distributed, the research is underpinned by a place-based understanding of innovation processes. Deploying a range of approaches, this work investigates the roles of actors and institutions shaping and practising the geographies of innovation. Specific interests are in the role of research and innovation in less prosperous and socially and spatially peripheral places and in tackling global societal challenges around inequalities, demographic and climate change. The ambition of this research is to foster, engage and impact the co-production of new and more socially responsible and embedded forms of innovative practices and institutions in places from the local to the global.
- The public sector, R&D and urban and regional development (Goddard)
- Universities and local, regional and urban innovation (Goddard, Kempton)
- Intermediary and alternative institutions for innovation (Goddard, James, Kempton)
- Local, regional and urban innovation policy (Dawley, MacKinnon, Goddard, Kempton)
Research in this theme engages the ordinary lived experiences of economy. Taking ethnographic, practice-based and other approaches, this work investigates the range of ways in which economy is practiced through the rhythms of everyday life and in spaces of the home, the workplace, the community and in public. Research on labour, finance, consumption and energy seeks to grasp the ways in which changing forms of capitalism and its alternatives are played out through daily life.
- Gig economy, gender and platform capitalism (James, Loomis)
- Social reproduction, finance and debt (Pollard)
- Austerity and financial crisis in communities (Stenning)
- Energy consumption, demand and management (Powells)
- Sustainable and ethical food consumption in daily life in the global South and North (Hughes)
This research theme relies on traditional and newly-emerging data sources to answer questions regarding development and socio-economic wellbeing at the individual, neighbourhood, urban, and regional scales. Using established quantitative methods, as well as newer spatial modelling applications and data visualization, these projects connect individual and place-level characteristics—especially related to demographic change—to unequal outcomes in economic, mental, and social wellbeing. The mechanisms by which migration and mobility affect individuals and, for places, redistribute human capital, impact development, and reinforce inequities and interdependencies are of particular interest.
Economic Geography practice at Newcastle includes research that examines the natural and social contingencies and implications of economic activity. We work closely with colleagues and collaborators around the world and with our neighbours in the North East of England to enable critical and progressive thinking and to support ethical civic and commercial decision-making. Our research addresses a diverse array of sustainability challenges, from the social and environmental dimensions of energy system investments to the sustainability of global production networks.
Social and spatial inequalities lie at the heart of economic geography research at Newcastle. Work in this theme engages critically with and seeks to challenge the geographically uneven nature of capitalism internationally. Using an array of conceptual, theoretical and methodological frameworks, studies address economy geographies across a range of areas in relation to scales and territories as well as networks, circuits and flows. The research seeks to develop the critique and forge new understandings of more socially and spatially inclusive forms of economy.
Our research group staff have significant experience and expertise in analysis of economic geographies.
Emeritus Professor Mike Coombes
Emeritus Professor John Goddard OBE
Emeritus Professor Neill Marshall
Our postgraduates are working on a wide variety of economic geography subjects. These range from the experiences of young Poles migrating to Northumberland to exploring the branding of Newcastle/Gateshead in an international context.
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Name |
Topic |
|---|---|
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Arezu Bari |
Making Informality Work: Self-Help Housing and Right to City |
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Gemma Bone |
The Politics of Debt: the struggle for social unity |
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Emile Boustani |
Variegated Patterns of Firm Finance: a Study of Automobile Suppliers in Hungary and Eastern Germany |
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Lewis Evans |
Creating new paths: the conversion and diversification of North Sea ports. |
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Sean Gill |
Transitions to adulthood: young Poles experiences of migration and life in Northumberland |
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Liam Keenan |
Financialisation and the decline of the local pub: An Anglo-German Comparison |
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Anja McCarthy |
The changing shape of the local state and its institutional arrangements in the broadening field of economic development and regeneration |
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Diana Morales Arcila |
The Impact of cooperation within localities in Regional Development: Eje Cafetero (Colombia) and the Saxon Trianh (Germany) |
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Peter Morris |
A Tale of two City Regions: How North East England and Tees Valley managed multi-faceted economic change in the second decade of the 21st century'. |
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Robert Pollock |
Placing Regions in the Path Creation of the UK's Offshore Wind Industry? |
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Ruth Puttick |
Innovation and public entrepreneurship in English city government: what is the role of philanthropic organisations?”. |
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Rebecca Richardson |
Place Branding for Urban Development: NewcastleGateshead in Comparative International Context |
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Laura Sariego-Kluge |
Geographies of public sector innovation and local economic development |
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Lexy Seedhouse |
Be(com)ing Indigenous in the Time of Extraction: (Re)articulating Identities in the Context of Peru’s Ley de Consulta Previa. |
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Graham Thrower |
The marketisation of infrastructure: The enmeshment of the qualitative state and variegated capital |
- Coombes M. 21st Century Labour Market Areas: concept, methods, applications. In: Labour Market Areas: current development and future use. 2017, Rome: Eurostat.
- Henry ND, Pollard JS, Sissons P, Ferreira J, Coombes M. Banking on exclusion: Data disclosure and geographies of UK personal lending markets. Environment and Planning A 2017, 49(9), 2046-2064.
- O’Brien P, Coombes M, Dawley S, Evans L and Pike A (2017) How to Create Great Jobs: Towards a Regional Industrial Strategy for Tees Valley CURDS, Newcastle University: Newcastle-upon-Tyne
- Marshall JN, Dawley S, Pike A, Pollard JS. Geographies of Corporate Philanthropy: The Northern Rock Foundation. Environment and Planning A 2017. In Press.
- James A. Work-Life Advantage: Sustaining Regional Learning and Innovation. Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
- Boyer K, Dermott E, James A, Macleavy J. Men at Work? Debating Shifting Gender Divisions of Care. Dialogues in Human Geography 2017, 7(1), 92-98.
- Boyer K, Dermott E, James A, MacLeavy J. Regendering care in the aftermath of recession?. Dialogues in Human Geography 2017, 7(1), 56–73.
- Williams P, James A, McConnell F, Vira B. Working at the margins? Muslim middle class professionals in India and the limits of 'labour agency'. Environment and Planning A 2017, 49(6), 1266-1285.
- Mackinnon D. Labour branching, redundancy and livelihoods: Towards a more socialised conception of adaptation in evolutionary economic geography. Geoforum 2017, 79, 70-80.
- Marshall JN, Dawley S, Pike A, Pollard JS. Geographies of Corporate Philanthropy: The Northern Rock Foundation. Environment and Planning A 2017. In Press.
- Hastings T, MacKinnon D. Re-embedding agency at the workplace scale: Workers and labour control in Glasgow call centres. Environment and Planning A 2017, 49(1), 104-120.
- O'Brien P, Pike A. Governing infrastructure funding and financing. In: Martin, R; Pollard, J, ed. Handbook of Geographies of Money and Finance. Cheltenham: Elgar, 2017, pp.223-252.
- O'Brien P, Coombes M, Dawley S, Evans L, Pike A. How to Create Great Jobs: Towards a Regional Industrial Strategy for Tees Valley: A Report for the TUC by the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, Newcastle University. Trades Union Congress, London: Newcastle University, 2017.
- Pike A, Lee N, MacKinnon D, Kempton L, Iddewala Y. Job Creation and Inclusive Growth in Cities. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2017.
- Pike A, Rodriguez-Pose A, Tomaney J. Local and Regional Development (2nd Edition). Routledge, 2017. In Preparation.
- Poon, J, Pollard JS, Chow J and Ewers M, (2017) The rise of Kuala Lumpur as an Islamic financial frontier, Regional Studies
- Pollard JS, Richter P, Down S, Ram M. Financialisation and small firms: A qualitative analysis of bio-science and film and media firms. International Small Business Journal 2017, Epub ahead of print.
- Marshall JN, Dawley S, Pike A, Pollard JS. Geographies of Corporate Philanthropy: The Northern Rock Foundation. Environment and Planning A 2017. In Press.
- Martin RL, Pollard JS, ed. The Elgar Handbook on the Geographies of Money and Finance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017. In Press.
- Martin RL, Pollard JS. The geography of money and finance. In: Martin,RL; Pollard,JS, ed. Handbook on the Geographies of Money and Finance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017, pp.1-26. In Press.
- Henry ND, Pollard JS, Sissons P, Ferreira J, Coombes M. Banking on exclusion: Data disclosure and geographies of UK personal lending markets. Environment and Planning A 2017, 49(9), 2046-2064.
- Wood, A. (2017) Advancing development projects through mega-events: the 2010 football World Cup and bus rapid transit in South Africa, Urban Geography, 1-17