Dr Franziska Paul is a Lecturer in Political Economy at the Adam Smith Business School. Franziska holds a PhD in Geography along with an MRes in Human Geography, both from the University of Glasgow, and an MA (Hons) in Geography-Sociology from the University of Aberdeen.

After completing her PhD on trade union movement building towards a new, radical labour environmentalism focussed on energy democracy, Franziska worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC-funded Global Remunicipalisation project. Franziska’s postdoctoral work focussed on public ownership, de-privatisation and democratisation of key services and infrastructures, including banking, energy, waste, local government and transport, in the US and Germany.

Franziska is also involved with the Public Futures database, a collaborative initiative and the first comprehensive collection of de-privatisation cases in the world.

Franziska is a member of the School's Entrepreneurship, Development and Political Economy research cluster. 

Areas of expertise:

• Critical political economy
• Economic democracy
• Local and regional wealth building
• Public and collective ownership
• Trade union environmentalism

List by: Type | Date

• International Partnership Development Fund, £4,710: “Establishing a Transnational Research Network on Public Banking”, PI, 2023
• Norges Forskningsråd (Research Council of Norway), £46,000 for Glasgow team (full award: £883,000): “Phasing in and phasing out: Reworking labour and energy transitions in the North Sea” (PHASE), Co-I, PI Dr Camilla Houeland from Fafo Norway, 2023
• Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Flexible Fund, £12,600: “Building a Global Database on Remunicipalisation”, Co-I with Prof Andrew Cumbers, 2020

Franziska is interested in supervising doctoral research that relates to alternative economic approaches as well as research into contemporary labour issues. Specific areas of interest include:

• local or community wealth building
• cooperative, public and/or collective ownership
• the social economy
• questions of wealth
• trade union environmentalism
• just transition
• and decent work.

Franziska currently teaches on the following courses:

• Management Issues and Controversies (MGT5264, PGT)
• Economic Crisis and Depressions (MGT4063, UG Hons)
• Entrepreneurship (MGT2014, UG)

Franziska regularly participates in knowledge exchange and public speaking engagements.

2023

• Invited seminar speaker, RECOURSE seminar series, University of Gdansk: "The political economy of remunicipalisation: Public ownership and the post-neoliberal turn?.Gdansk, Poland.
  Guest on ‘Co-Water Voice’ podcast hosted by Dr Prathiwi Putri (University of Kassel): “Franziska Paul on the German trajectory of (neoliberal) governance, the locus of ‘local state’ and community movements”.
• Invited speaker on a public lecture series jointly hosted by the University of Vienna and the Chamber of Labour and Employees Vienna: “Wem gehört…? Die Rückkehr der Eigentumsfrage aus globaler Perspektive” (Who owns…? The return of the ownership question from a global perspective). Vienna, Austria.

2022

• Co-organiser of the “Public Futures – Global Remunicipalisation/Deprivatisation Database Strategic Workshop”, co-hosted with global union federation for public sector workers, Public Services International. Ferney-Voltaire, France.
• Invited speaker at the Shifting Narratives conference hosted by University College London and University of Greenwich: “Nation Building and Local Government in Germany”.

2021

• Webinar co-host for the launch of the Public Futures database: “Mapping Remunicipalisation: Global Report and Database Launch”