Political Economy Futures Forum
Research Seminars
The key activities are the PEFF Research Seminars. The seminars build community across the scope of PEFF research and help participants develop excellent research in a collegial environment. We particularly welcome cross-disciplinary contributions from early career researchers and scholars from underrepresented groups. By fostering close connections, the PEFF seminar will, in turn, lead to the development of significant funding bids, especially by developing interdisciplinary capacity to answer targeted thematic funding calls. Responsibility for organizing the seminar rotates across the theme leads. All seminars will run in a hybrid format, to ensure accessibility.
You can see seminar topics & abstracts from previous years on our Previous Research Seminar Series page.
Semester 1, 2026-2027 seminars
See below the schedule for the coming semester, autumn 2026. Seminars are held fortnightly on Tuesdays, 11:30 - 12:30, ARC 225 (teams link available for hybrid participation).
6 October 2026 - Carbon Citizens: A People’s History of Britain’s Energy Order
Tuesday 6 October 2026 ‖ 11:30am - 12:30pm ‖ ARC 225 ‖
Paper: Carbon Citizens: A People’s History of Britain’s Energy Order
Presenter: Ewan Gibbs (School of Social and Political Sciences)
Abstract: Pipelines, pits and power stations have been defining features of Britain’s politics, economy and society since the Second World War. Carbon Citizenship conceptualises the economic and political bonds formed around energy generation and consumption under the stewardship of the national state. These relationships have extended from coal mines and offshore drilling rigs through Whitehall to kitchens and living rooms. This paper presents a new book project which explores postwar British history through the centrality of energy generation. It does concentrates on the (re)organisation of energy production, employment and ownership across decades marked by major innovations. Key themes include patterns of public and private ownership, the evolving mix of sources which Britain has depended upon and the varying role of both government and markets in organising the future of generation. These pivotal histories are best understood through the people and places which were experienced them most viscerally. Carbon Citizens uses a unique combination of original archival research and oral testimonies recorded with workers, activists and residents of energy regions in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Understanding how energy production has driven political change means recentring British history towards Midlands mining villages, nuclear North Wales and Highlands oil boom towns.
20 October 2026 - Technocratic and Civilisational Declinism in Europe
Tuesday 20 October 2026 ‖ 11:30am - 12:30pm ‖ ARC 225 ‖
Paper: Technocratic and Civilisational Declinism in Europe
Presenter: Scott Lavery (School of Social and Political Sciences)
Abstract: The idea of decline haunts contemporary European politics. Technocratic elites warn that the EU is falling behind other major economic powers. Figures on the far-right issue dark warnings of a continent overwhelmed by mass immigration, decadent liberal elites and the looming threat of civilisational erasure. Focussing on the cases of Mario Draghi and Giorgia Meloni as archetypes of 'technocratic' and 'civilisational' declinism, this paper advances a comparative political and intellectual history of this new declinism in Europe. Tracing the lineages of each vision back to the early 1990s, the paper argues that the breakdown of the post-Maastricht settlement and successive crises in the post-2009 period laid the foundations for a new politics of decline. While 'technocratic' and 'civilisational' declinism appear to be fundamentally opposed, these rival visions have become increasingly entangled over time, with potentially far-reaching consequences for the future of European politics and integration.
3 November 2026 - Complex Circles? Navigating Share and Repair Ecosystems in Scotland through Game-Based Learning
Tuesday 3 November 2026 ‖ 11:30am - 12:30pm ‖ ARC 225 ‖
Topic: Complex Circles? Navigating Share and Repair Ecosystems in Scotland through Game-Based Learning
Presenter: Franziska Paul (Adam Smith Business School)
Abstract: This contribution would present and discuss emerging research, which has recently received seed funding from Scotland Beyond Net Zero. The Complex Circles project explores how local economy actors navigate the management of share and repair organisations (SROs) in Scotland, in a context of recent commitments to circular economy and community wealth building, and sits at the intersection of organisational studies, management, geography, political economy and game-based learning.
About the project: The Complex Circles project addresses a research and policy gap focusing on Share and Repair Organisations (SROs) in Scotland, pivotal for sustainability and inclusive growth under the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 and the Community Wealth Building Act. Acknowledging the key role that SROs (such as tool libraries and repair cafes) play in reducing consumption, supporting local economies and adding social value, we aim to better understand the hidden complexities of these organisations and existing challenges for the transformation of local economic ecosystems, from hidden labour to issues accessing and using infrastructure, and managing policy and compliance. Collaborating with Circular Communities Scotland and other experts, the project will explore how SROs manage infrastructure for community economic activities. Our findings will inform the development of a scenario-based game which explains operational realities and policy conditions to support both SROs, and the wider conditions needed for circular, just, inclusive and sustainable futures. The Complex Circles project is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Glasgow (Franziska Paul, Timothy Peacock) and University of Edinburgh (Lucy Wishart, Shawn Bodden) in partnership with the Edinburgh Library of Things, Ostrero, and Circular Communities Scotland.
10 November 2026 - PGR session
Tuesday 10 November 2026 ‖ 11:30pm - 12:30pm ‖ ARC 225
This session features 2 papers from PGRs in the PEFF community.
Topic 1: Making the film is inherently political: exploring the legal and political relationship between directors and their producers
Presenter: Panagiotis Lampropoulos
Abstract: This paper resists the idea that the impact of emerging technologies such as AI on creative industries is one which is politically and legally neutral, and which exists in a historical vacuum. As part of a greater study on AI upscaling and production of films, this work, through an interdisciplinary approach combining legal analysis and political economy literature, demonstrates that the loss of control over creative decisions, the replacement of workers by machines and further concentration in the film industry are a result of the law’s failure to recognise the inherently political nature of the film, which sits at the centre of the battle of the wills between producers and directors. Initially, this paper sets a theoretical framework focusing on three fundamental elements of this relationship: economics of dependence, dependence fostering domination over the individual and the industry, and finally the role of technology as a catalyst to this effect. Having defined this relationship, three legal case-studies, namely Bertold Brecht’s The Threepenny Lawsuit, the colourisation hearings of the 1980s in the US and the impact of the Communications Act 2003 are presented. Each of these case-studies demonstrates the inherent imbalance between directors and producers, the failure of the law to balance the playing field and its impact on the commodification of work. This work serves as a reminder that the current impact of AI tools in the film industry exists within a greater political economy of filmmaking and highlights that lawmakers ought to pursue policy emphasising the importance of director autonomy and levelling the director/producer dichotomy.
Topic 2: Fund Thy Neighbour: IMF’s Intervention by Proxy in Fragile and Conflict Affected States.
Presenter: Abdullah Al Mahmud
Abstract: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cannot lend into large-scale conflicts like civil wars. Its Articles of Agreement, its arrears policy and its requirement for a functioning government to sign a new program make direct engagement unavailable in exactly the states where these wars are most severe and prone to be spilling across their borders to make the whole region contagious. In this paper, I argue that the Fund reaches these large-scale conflicts indirectly, through their neighbours, and I call the pattern Intervention by Proxy (IbP). On a panel of 148 countries between 1980 and 2025, I find that the onset of a civil war in the neighbourhood raises the probability that a country signs a new IMF arrangement the following year by 4.4 per cent against a base rate of 17.6 per cent. Further results establish this as a temporal mechanism of how the Fund behaves, rather than a ‘once-in-a-while’ mood: it responds to a civil war onset, not to the neighbourhoods chronically at war; it responds through negotiated and conditional arrangements rather than pouring out some emergency liquidity; and it always responds in the following year(s); and never in advance. I develop the novelty of IbP as a two-sided argument in which the Fund’s willingness to lend in a country affected by neighbourhood’s spillovers and a government’s willingness to borrow in the onset must both be satisfied – and the estimate is positive under all seven definitions of the neighbourhood I test. To my knowledge, this is the first study to admit neighbourhood conflict into a selection equation for IMF lending and to show that its absence should be read as a specification problem.
17 November 2026 -Defining the Relevant Market: Legitimacy through Boundary-Drawing in Competition Law
Tuesday 17 November 2026 ‖ 11:30am - 12:30pm ‖ ARC 225 ‖
Paper: Defining the Relevant Market: Legitimacy through Boundary-Drawing in Competition Law
Presenter: Magali Eben (School of Law
Abstract:
At a time when competition policy’s relationship with pressing social concerns (such as labour standards, sustainability, and democracy) is back on the radar, debate about the relevance of market definition to competition law may appear rather unglamorous. Yet this debate strikes at the heart of what competition law is meant to achieve. Although the scope of ‘the relevant market’ in a competition law case tends to be dismissed as a purely technical matter, such dismissal overlooks the relevant market’s normative dimensions. This article puts forward that establishing the scope of a ‘market’ like this is not merely a procedural requirement but can contribute to the legitimacy of competition law enforcement as perceived by the public. Beyond providing a framework to assess conduct and harm, the identification of a relevant market can demonstrate that competition law is enforced in line with its collective interest aims, thus evidencing that an enforcer is aware of and respects its own mandate. This can ensure internal legitimacy and keep the enforcement of competition law distinct from other areas of law which may apply to the same actors and conduct. In an era of expanding expectations of competition law, this legitimising function deserves renewed attention.
1 December 2026 - Advancing the Heterodoxy: Private Law, Power, and the Production of Prices
Tuesday 1 December 2026 ‖ 11:30am - 12:30pm ‖ ARC 225 ‖
Paper: Advancing the Heterodoxy: Private Law, Power, and the Production of PricesPresenter: Anna Chadwick (School of Law)
Abstract: Orthodox and heterodox theories of price formation are preoccupied with the behaviour of firms operating in markets characterised by varying degrees of competition. According to the still-dominant neoclassical account, firms are price takers and prices emerge from the interaction of supply and demand, coordinating production by communicating information about scarcity and consumer preferences. This micro-level theory underpins a far-reaching political vision: markets constitute a self-regulating mechanism capable of coordinating economic life without conscious planning, while law and government should principally secure the conditions in which the price mechanism can operate free from ‘distortion’.