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RESEARCH AFFILIATIONS 

2023
Visiting Scholar, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

2021 – now
Member, Platform Economies Research Network, The New School, USA

2020
Visiting Scholar, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark [postponed due to Coronavirus]

2019 – now
Scientific Advisory Board, Department of STS (formerly MCTS), Technical University Munich, Germany

2019 – now
Associate Member, Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation, Lancaster University, UK

2017
Visiting Scholar, Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

2017
Visiting Professor, Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS), Technical University of Munich

2016 – now
Advisory Board, Changing Political Economy of Research and Innovation annual workshop

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Current & Future Research Agenda

  • Digital Ledger & Blockchain Technologies in Finance: I’m at the start of a project looking at the use of blockchain in financial markets and the construction of alternative asset classes using new techno-financial mechanisms. I’m especially interested in the tokenization of real world assets and the use of blockchain technologies in payment systems.
  • Assetization in Technoscientific Capitalism: broadly-speaking, my current and future research is concerned with understanding the entanglement of finance and technoscience manifested in the transformation of things into assets. This research has been funded by Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
  • Data Assets & Data Rentiership: I’m increasingly focusing on questions about the measurement and valuation of digital data, globally – includes projects funded by SSHRC and Germany’s GIZ. I explore these issues through the concepts of assetization and rentiership, where the latter entails the extraction of value from social activities and relations rather than the creation of new products and services: https://rentiership.com
  • Financing in High-tech Sectors (e.g. life sciences, digital tech): I’m interested in economic expertise, assumptions, and knowledges as well technoscience itself in high-tech sectors. I study the financing of technoscience in order to understand how financial logics (e.g. capitalization), financial knowledges (e.g. accounting), and financial practices (e.g. corporate governance) come to configure the organization and governance of high-tech sectors.

Past Research

  • Biofuels, Biotechnology & Emerging Bio-economies: funded by SSHRC and focused on innovation in renewable energy generation from ‘advanced’ or ‘second generation’ biofuels. I was interested in how new forms of environmental technoscience (e.g. advanced biofuels) are configured by market imperatives and, in turn, how they come to configure markets in particular ways. This research was part of a long-running interest in the bio-economy, which included the use of biomass in the production of products, chemicals, etc.
  • Sustainable Infrastructure & the Engineering Profession: funded by Work in Warming World program, I looked at innovation in transport infrastructure  that respond to needs for climate change adaptation and mitigation. I was interested in the implications of this sort of innovation for the engineering profession (e.g. codes, training, education, licensing, etc.).
  • Public-private Partnerships & the New Market-State: I examined the marketization of public services and public infrastructure developments.
  • Rethinking Neoliberalism: I critically unpacked the concept of neoliberal. This arose from a dissatisfaction with current analytical accounts of neoliberalism that characterize it as a market-centred ideology, project or epistemic order. Much of this research agenda came out of an examination of the varieties of neoliberal restructuring at the supra-national, national and regional scales; this research was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
  • Innovation and Knowledge-based Commodity Chains in the Life Sciences: longstanding interest in the innovation and spatial dynamics of the life sciences. I received funding from the ESRC to study the particular forms of innovation and economic governance along ‘knowledge-based commodity chains’ and how this relates to regional development and upgrading.

WORKING PAPERS (Rather old now)