Things fall apart? Towards an anticipatory International Political Economy
The International Political Economy Working Group is hosting its annual workshop at the Department of Politics, University of Manchester on 15 and 16 October 2026. The theme of the workshop this year is 'Things Fall Apart? Towards an Anticipatory International Political Economy (IPE) in an Age of Global Disorder'. The workshop will see a host of paper presentations by scholars from universities across both the Global North and South, from different theoretical and methodological streams in International Political Economy, and from different stages of academic careers. As a result, the workshop is expected to have a diverse range of viewpoints and critical discussions on IPE. The topics that will be discussed in the workshop include inequality and the everyday, global trade and production, state and hegemony, polycrisis, environmental governance, theories of IPE, development, global finance, militarism, AI, and new state capitalism. The workshop will also have a publishing roundtable session for early-career researchers and postgraduate researchers with editors from notable IPE journals. Lastly, at the end of the first day of the workshop, there will be a book launch session for the book A Feminist Political Economy of Trade: Beyond Free Trade Feminism hosted by authors Dr Adrienne Roberts and Dr Silke Trommer, followed by a roundtable discussion and Q&A.
Programme
Day 1 - Thursday 15 October
10.30-11.00: Registration + refreshments
11.00-11.15: Welcome
11.30am-1pm: Panel sessions
Panel 1 - Inequality and the everyday in IPE
Chair: Asma Abdi, University of Manchester
- Pete Duberly, University of Manchester — Locating Alternatives in the Cracks of
Neoliberalism: An Ethnographic Approach - Jingjing Huang, University of Manchester — Ku'er (Queer) Love as Method:
Reimagining the Political Economy of Love - Moises Vieira, University of Manchester — Neoliberal Meritocracy and Migrant
Scholars in the UK: Precarity as Epistemic Marginalisation - Magdalena Rodekirchen, University of Manchester — Thinking-with Discomfort as
Method for Feminist Political Economy
Panel 2 - States, hegemony, and capitalist transformation
Chair: Ujan Natik, University of Manchester
- Ahlem Faraoun - Epistemic Politics and Digital Capitalism: Tracing the
Manosphere— Red Scare Nexus in South Korea - Sofia Szapowal — Insuring the Unknown: Export Credit Agencies and Anticipatory
Statecraft in Wartime Ukraine - Michaela Hamilton — Archimedes, not Faust: illiquid housing liabilities as pivot of
Anglo-American macroeconomic statecraft - Hannes Baumann, University of Liverpool — The geoeconomics of the Gulf
monarchies after the Iran war - Simon Payaslian, Boston University — Ingratiation in Armenian Foreign Policy: The
Pashinyan Government
1-2pm: Lunch
2-3.30pm: Panel sessions
Panel 3 - Anticipating AI: social reproduction, resistance, and the political economy of digital disorder
Chair: Alessandra Mezzadri, SOAS University of London
- Neerej Dev, University of Wolverhampton - The Informal Commons of Care Labour:
Generative AI as an Infrastructure of Racialised So-cial Reproduction - Claire English, Anglia Ruskin University - Alexa may know you have Parkinson's
disease long before you do: Datafication, ‘Carebots’ and the crisis of Social
Reproduction - Frank Maracchione, SOAS University of London - Machine (un)learning for liberation:
AI training for liberation - Alessandra Mezzadri, SOAS University of London - Artificial Intelligence and the
Social Reproduction of Value
Panel 4 - Rethinking IPE in an age of polycrisis: temporality, power, and contestation
Chair: Ellie Gore, University of Manchester
- Matthew Eagleton-Pierce, SOAS University of London — Anticipating the Emergent:
Multiple Temporalities in International Political Economy - Davide Schmid, Manchester Metropolitan University — State Capitalism at the
Border - Haydn Shephard, King's College London — In Defence of Polanyian IPE
- Yuliya Yurchenko, University of Greenwich — Militarised Neoliberalism and the New
Tripolar World Order: Subordination and Resistance in Ukraine - Stanley Wilshire, University of Manchester — The anticipatory politics of carbon
budgeting
4-6pm
Book launch
Adrienne Roberts and Silke Trommer, A Feminist Political Economy of Trade:
Beyond Free Trade Feminism (2026) Bristol University Press
In conversation with:
- Ellie Gore (University of Manchester)
- Erin Hannah (King's University College, Western University)
- Frank Maracchione, (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
- Alessandra Mezzadri (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
- Magdalena Rodekirchen (University of Manchester)
Refreshments provided
Day 2 – Friday 16 October
9–10.30am: Panel sessions
Panel 5 - Global trade and the new geoeconomics: power, discourse, and supply chains |
Chair: Samuel Toscano, University of Manchester
- Priyanshu Priyan, Central University of Jharkhand — Mapping the Choke-Point
Economy: Critical Minerals and Reshaping of Global Trade Dynamics - Joshua White, University of Sheffield — Garment Geo-Economics? Rethinking the
Green Transition in 'Non-Strategic' Global Supply Chains - Esra Gorgulu, University of Essex — The Politics of Depoliticisation in Global Trade
Discourse - Poppy Winanti, Universitas Gadjah Mada — Strategic Industrial Policy in the Global
South in a Fragmented World
Panel 6 - Theoretical approaches to IPE: new directions
Chair: Matt Barlow, University of Glasgow
- Asha Herten-Crabb, University of Warwick — Towards an Ontological Political
Economy: Power, World-Making, and the Futures of the Global Economy - Jinxuan Wu, University of Manchester — Selective Reshaping in an Age of Disorder:
China and the Emerging Political Economy of Global Health Governance - Tom Richardson, Oxford Brookes University — Vernacular Domains and Liberal
Institutions in Post-Industrial Britain - Elias Rutten, Leiden University/Independent Scholar — From Bretton Woods to
Blockchain: The Long Crisis of Dollar Hegemony and the GENIUS Act - Marc Schelhase, King’s College London — Anticipation in IPE: The political economy
of risk
10.30-11am: Coffee break
11am-12.30pm: Panel and roundtable session
Panel 7 - Uneven development and the changing dynamics of global capitalism
Chair: Asma Abdi, University of Manchester
- Ujan Natik, University of Manchester — Caste Capitalism and Finance: A Theoretical
Investigation into the Modus-Operandi of the Finance Sector in Rural India - Madhuri Kamtam, Ulster University — What Keeps Beedi Alive? Labour, Capital and
the Future of Informal Work in India - Caroline Cornier & Umesh Moramudali, University of Manchester — Dollar Bonds
without Development: Why Increasing Reliance on Global Bond Markets Is Not a
Substitute for Structural Transformation - Ricardo Barbosa, Jr., Clark University — Markets Yet to Come: Cattle Traceability and
Anticipatory Compliance in the Brazilian Amazon
Roundtable: Defining the New State Capitalism
Chair: Alex Nunn, University of Manchester
- Nicole Loughlin (University of Manchester)
- Matthew Male (University of Manchester)
- Jinxuan Wu (University of Manchester)
- Greig Charnock (University of Manchester)
- Stuart Shields (University of Manchester)
12.30-1.45pm: Lunch + BISA-IPEG AGM
1.45-3.15pm: Panel and roundtable
Panel 8 - Global trade and the new geoeconomics: power, discourse, and supply chains II
Chair: Oksana Levkovych, LSE
- Nicolle Loughlin, University of Manchester — Absorptive Intermediation: Class
Power and the Relocation of Discretion in the Multipolar World Economy - Andreas Nölke, Goethe University — Back to the future: the current turn to a new
phase of organized capitalism - Hirad Mokhayeri, Islamic Azad University — Repositioning the Periphery:
Anticipating the Emerging Geoeconomic Role of the South Caucasus amid Global
Economic Fragmentation - Ariel Jingjing Sun, University of Bath/Fordham University — Softening Surveillance:
Geopolitical Power and the Production of Anticipatory Knowledge at the IMF
Meet the Editors Roundtable (for PGRs and ECRs)
Chair: Matt Barlow, University of Glasgow
- Silke Trommer (University of Manchester & co-editor, Globalizations)
- Adrienne Roberts (University of Manchester & editor, New Political Economy)
- James Pattison (University of Manchester & lead editor, Journal of Global Security Studies)
3.30-5pm: Panel session
Panel 9 - Continuity and change in the global financial order
Chair: Ujan Natik, University of Manchester
- Jacopo Maria Magurno, University of Sussex — Beyond Organised Finance: Italian
Banking and the Making of Eu-ropean Financialisation - Melike Metintaş, Bilkent University — Developing Country Agency: Turkey's Creditor
Preferences and Their Impact on the Global Development Finance Landscape - Jake Wood, University of York — Convergence and Divergence in EMDE Financial
Regimes: Insights from Strategic Orientation Analysis - Jianzhi Zhao, University of Exeter — How can China's Currency Swap Arrangements be
Alternatives to IMF Lending? -
Christian Koutny, University of Hertfordshire — The Uneven Geographies of Asset
Management: Europe's green hydrogen strategy and its link to Southern Africa
Registration is free for BISA members and £54 for non-members. Become a member to access a free ticket. The workshop is open to both accepted panel participants and observers.