Economic geographies of the city
Global Apparel Research Programme (GARP)
This collection of research projects aims to understand the dramatic reconfiguration of the global garment and clothing industry and its impact on the urban and regional communities involved. Research has focused on London's garment sector, the apparel industry in East-Central Europe, and is currently being extended to examine the impacts of trade liberalisation in Europe, North America and Asia. For more information, see: www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/garp/ [new window].
Rethinking the economy
Economies have rarely formed an explicit focus of research in economic geography. Notions of embeddedness and entanglement have recently become influential in rethinking economies but retain a dualism. This project examines economies as social practice forming a quotidian and space-time path dependent but highly diverse part of everyday life. For more information contact Professor Roger Lee: r.lee@qmul.ac.uk.
Bringing it all back home? A Chinese bank going global in London
Since 1979 China has opened itself up to western capitalist economic norms and practices. This project examines the processes and relations of globalisation in a major Chinese financial institution. In particular, it examines the changing notions and practices of trust involved in disembedding from state control, embedding in a global financial city – London – and re-embedding in Beijing. The project is financed by a Dorothy Hodgkins award. For more information contact Li Yajing: liyajing@hotmail.com.
Knowledge-based city-regions
Research on knowledge-based city-regions explores various aspects of transformations of cities and regions in the ‘information age’: ACRE (Accommodating Creative Knowledge: Competitiveness of European Metropolitan Regions within the Enlarged Union) focuses on the ‘creative class’ in cities and investigates the conditions for stimulating creative urban regions; TRANSFORM (Benchmarking and Fostering Transformative Use of ICT in EU Regions), is a project funded by the EU Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) it examines ‘regional cultures’ and regional institutional capacities and their role in fostering transformative impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) on the economy and society in Europe. For more details see: www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/sokol.html [new window].
Work-Life ‘Balance’ and Gendered Geographies of Learning in the New Economy
This research explores gendered work-life conflicts amongst knowledge workers; the utility of different employer-provided work-life balance (WLB) arrangements for reconciling those conflicts; and the mechanisms through which the uptake of workers’ preferred WLB arrangements promotes and/or constrains routine learning and innovation processes within urban
and regional economies. This research is based on ongoing fieldwork in the cities of Dublin, Cambridge and London. For more information see: http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/profiles/4501.html [new window].
Work, Employment and Social Change in India’s New Service Economy
Based on ongoing fieldwork in India's National Capital Region (Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon) this research explores the lived experiences of India's young, educated, urban middle classes working in different sectors of India's new service economy; emerging patterns of career progression through cross-firm and cross-sectoral labour mobility; and the developmental role of different labour market intermediaries in mediating work and training practices, brokering employment relationships, and improving labour market outcomes for these workers. For more information see: http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/profiles/4506.html [new window].