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Staff Profile

Dr Jessa Loomis

Lecturer in Economic Geography

Background

Background:

I am a feminist economic geographer and my research examines the everyday geographies of global finance. Across my research projects, I explore how people adapt to and resist the demands of finance-led growth. The aim of this research is to highlight the dynamism and contingency at the heart of economic life, making way for an alternative politics of the economy. 

I joined the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology as a Lecturer in Economic Geography in 2020. Before joining Newcastle, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban and Economic Geography at Clark University (2018-2020). I earned my doctorate from the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky (2018) and hold graduate certificates in Social Theory and Gender and Women's Studies.

My areas of interest include: the everyday geographies of global finance; the financialization of social reproduction; geographies of financial in/exclusion; economic subjectivity; housing and the 'asset economy'; everyday life; feminist approaches to finance; the politics of knowledge production; private equity investment; pedagogical power and schooling; geographies of fintech; nonprofit organizations; welfare state restructuring; United States.

Research

In my research, I trace the often abstract and opaque workings of global finance and connect these processes with their everyday effects on the ground. Through this approach, my work reveals the social and spatial relations of financial dispossession and poses political questions about the ongoing financialization of the economy. This approach motivates several research projects, detailed below:

The Nonprofit Spaces of Financial Coaching

I have a longstanding interest in efforts to ‘democratize finance’ and promote financial inclusion in the United States. My research in this area focuses on the rise of non-profit financial coaching programs and shows how these programs encourage participants to pay down their debt, monitor their credit scores, avoid predatory lending services, and save and invest using mainstream financial products. This research contributes to scholarship in geography on financial inclusion and exclusion, the everyday life of finance, and economic subjectivity by advancing the idea that the financialization of the economy is achieved not only through policies that structure the financial landscape, or through the actions of traditional financial actors on Wall Street, but also through efforts to shape the financial behaviours and dispositions of urban residents. The findings from this research call into question the motivations and terms of the so-called ‘democratization of finance’ and suggests the need to more closely examine the conditions and material outcomes of the financial inclusion agenda in the United States.

Homebuying and the Intimate Geographies of Wealth Accumulation in the United States

My project “Dear Seller: Homebuying and the Intimate Geographies of Wealth Accumulation” seeks to better understand the role of Dear Seller letters in the contemporary relations of homebuying in the United States. Funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SRG21/211201; £9,474; December 2021-September 2023), this original research is the first systematic study of ‘Dear Seller’ letters, sometimes known as real estate 'love letters', and will examine how different actors use and experience these letters in the homebuying process. This research will provide an intimate geographical account of the often out-of-sight practices that shape residential real estate transactions.

Dis/Investments in Spaces of Care

Another strand of my work examines how spaces of care become sites of financial accumulation. In collaboration with Caitlin Henry (Geography, University of Manchester) I am examining private equity investment in spaces of health/care. This project titled “Healthcare as Asset: Private Equity Investment and the Changing Geographies of Care in the United States” examines how private equity (PE) investment may be changing the provisioning of care in the US. By shining a light on the corporate and financial strategies that are typical of private equity investment, our work provides a feminist analysis of the strategies used to extract value from spaces of health/care.

I also currently co-edited a special issue (2023) in Environment and Planning A on the marketization of social reproduction with Tom Baker (University of Auckland, NZ), Dan Cohen (Queen’s University, CAN) and Emily Rosenman (Penn State, USA). Bringing together nine geographically diverse and empirically rich papers, this special issue explores how systems of social reproduction are changed through the imposition of market and financial logics – and the permutations these logics take as they articulate with the more-than-economic work of reproducing life. In so doing, this special issue demonstrates that a conversation between social reproduction theory and economic geographical theories of markets can illuminate the contradictions and possibilities of these processes in the contemporary moment. 

Feminist Politics of Knowledge Production

Another area of my work considers the history and future of the subdiscipline of economic geography. Two co-authored publications—one in Environment & Planning A: Economy and Space (2018) and another in Progress in Human Geography (2020)— intervene in scholarly debates about the current terrain of knowledge production in geography and speak back to narratives about the history and future of the subdiscipline from my vantage point as an early career and feminist scholar. These publications, along with a co-authored book chapter (2020) on feminist contributions to economic geography in the Routledge International Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies, advance a feminist analysis of the politics of knowledge production and call for diversifying perspectives and broadening conversations within economic geography.

In addition, I served as an elected member on the Economic Geography Specialty Group board of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) and along with colleagues, I created and continue to co-organize the Women in Economic Geography Social Hour at the annual AAG conference (2017-2020) and RGS-IBG conference (2022-2023). 

Teaching

During the 2023-2024 academic year, I am contributing to the following modules in semester 1:

  • GEO2099 Economic Geography (Module Leader)
  • GEO8016: Philosophies of Human Geography (MA program)
  • GEO8017: Human Geography Concepts in Action (MA program)

Prospective MA and PhD students: Newcastle is part of the ESRC-funded Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Programme (NINE DTP). I am happy to support funding applications for postgraduate study via this or other routes. Please contact me to discuss opportunities for postgraduate study, especially if your research interests align with my specialisms in feminist finance, everyday economies, financialisation, financial inclusion, fintech, social reproduction, or housing.

Postgraduate Supervision

Luke Green (PhD, expected 2024). The Financialising Univer[City]? A study of University Real Estate Investment in Edinburgh and Manchester, UK. Co-supervised with Andy Pike and Jane Pollard. ESRC funding.

Abigail Hardcastle (MA, 2023). Decentralised and ‘De-Gendered’ Digital Finance: The Financial Subjectivities of Cryptocurrencies and the Production of Masculinity. ESRC funding.

Publications