Committee
EGRG activities are organised by a committee of volunteers working in Geography Departments across the UK and beyond, each typically serving for 3 years. Elections to the Committee happen at our AGM, held each year at the RGS-IBG Conference.
Chair – Allan Watson
Allan Watson is a Reader in Economic Geography at Loughborough University, UK; and an Associate Director of the Globalisation and World Cities (GaWC) research network. Allan has published widely on the economic geographies of the music industry and the wider creative and media industries in leading academic journals, as well as authoring the monograph Cultural Production in and Beyond the Recording Studio (Routledge, 2014). Allan is also co-editor of Rethinking Creative Cities Policy: Invisible Agents and Hidden Protagonists (Routledge, 2015); Global City Makers: Economic Actors and Practices in the World City Network (Edward Elgar, 2019); and Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Cultural Policy Concept (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). [Webpage]
Secretary – Kean Fan Lim
Dr. Kean Fan Lim is Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography at Newcastle University. He is primarily interested in how political-economic evolution in East Asia is constituted by proactive state intervention. Over the past decade, Dr. Lim examined how industrial, social welfare and financial experimental policies were implemented in selected cities across China to enhance the Leninist developmental approach. He has published two books, including one in the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers’ flagship book series, and multiple articles in major journals in human geography, economic sociology, political economy, China studies and East Asian studies. Dr. Lim served as an elected board member of the American Association of Geographers Economic Geography Specialty Group in 2017 and 2018, and is currently an editorial advisory board member of Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space and the RGS-IBG Book Series. [Webpage]
Treasurer – Julie MacLeavy
Julie MacLeavy is Professor of Economic Geography at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. Her research interests include the governance of work and worklessness, work-orientated welfare reform, austerity, gender divisions of work and care, neoliberalism and urban change. Julie is an Associate Editor of the journal Geoforum. [Webpage]
Prizes Officer – Liam Keenan
Liam Keenan is Assistant Professor in Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham. As an economic geographer, his research interests include financialization, financial centres, global financial networks, and global production networks. Liam is currently researching the role of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in reshaping the geographies of several global industries as part of wider transformations related to increasing financialization. [Webpage]
Postgraduate Representative – Minjing Li
Minjing Li is a second-year doctoral student at CURDS at Newcastle University. Her research interests include global production networks, variegated capitalism, global cities, digital service sectors, and the political economy of regional development. Her PhD research aims to adopt the GPN framework to the study of Chinese creative industries and explore the dynamic interplay between economic and non-economic actors.
Nina is an economic and cultural geographer with expertise in digital labour and work in the cultural and creative industries. She graduated with a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, where her thesis examined the working lives and workspaces of freelancers within the creative economy. Nina is currently working as a Research Associate with XR Stories/ University of York. Within this role, she is co-leading a project exploring the geographies of virtual production. She has also worked on various research projects including work on VR concerts, just transitions to decarbonisation and creative responses to industry resilience post-COVID-19. She specialises in a range of research methods, including online research methods such as netnography and qualitative methods such as interviews, visual methodologies and participatory approaches.
Events Officer-Carlo Inverardi-Ferri
Carlo is a Lecturer in Economic Geography at Queen Mary University of London. His work develops political economic and ecological approaches to the study of globalised systems of production. This agenda is carried out through research in several theoretical and empirical areas, including labour geographies, waste recycling, and climate change. Carlo has participated in projects focusing on socio-ecological transformations, particularly in East Asia, and most recently, his research has been financed by the British Academy and the European Research Council. Carlo is an Early Career Editor of Territory, Politics, Governance, and his work has appeared in Economic Geography, Progress in Human Geography, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, among other publications. [webpage]
Social Media & Web Officer – Wenjing(Wendee) Zhang
Wendee is an economic geographer, with research interests mainly including environmental sustainability, urban planning and studies on smart and future cities. Wendee finished her PhD in Geography from University of Melbourne, the thesis examined the sustainability transitions of urban planning in a future city, its implications on environmental policies on urban water management, and the usage of hydraulic missions to realise water sustainability. Wendee is currently a postdoc at the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool. She has experience in a range of quantitative and qualitative methods, now on the Groundswell project investigating the health/wellbeing benefits of urban green and blue spaces. [Webpage]
International Officers – Lotte Thomsen
Lotte Thomsen is an economic geographer primarily interested in the dynamics and effects of global value chains, focusing on the clothing, jewellery, gemstone, gold and electric vehicle industries. Lotte often explores issues of value creation and value capture, as well as the economic, social and environmental sustainability impacts of global production in the Global South. Empirically, her work mainly revolves around the strategies and practices of lead firms in Europe and suppliers in Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore. Current projects are concerned with geographies of dis/association, value and wealth chains, and the changing dynamics of global production in the age of polycrisis. [Webpage]
Ordinary Members – Sarah Hall and Jennifer Johns
Sarah Hall is a Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham. Her work explores: the contemporary transformation of the financial system and its implications for finance led economic development; elite financial labour markets; international financial centres and new forms of financial globalisation associated with currency internationalisation. [Webpage]
Jennifer Johns is a Reader in International Business in the School of Management, University of Bristol, with interdisciplinary research interests centred on network approaches to economic development, entrepreneurship and innovation. Her current research focuses on transparency in cocoa and garments supply chains and the Modern Slavery act and the transformation of global production networks through the increased adoption of additive manufacturing (3D printing). [Webpage]
Ordinary Members (Diversity and Equity role) – Sarah Marie Hall and Rhiannon Pugh
Sarah Marie Hall’s research interests focus on: ethics and consumption in everyday life, families and intimate relationships, and developing ethnographic techniques. She is currently Reader in Human Geography at the University of Manchester, researching an ethnography of how families get by in times of recession and austerity. Sarah completed a PhD looking at ethics and consumption in families, schools and companies at the University of Liverpool. [Webpage]
Rhiannon Pugh is Senior Lecturer at Lund University in Sweden. She is an economic geographer with interests in the themes of regional development, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Rhiannon is especially interested in researching what can broadly be termed less favoured regions, such as post-industrial, uncompetitive, and peripheral regions. As a committee member of the EGRG with a special interest in diversity and inclusion, she looks forward to working on these issues with the committee and wider economic geography community. [Webpage]