Critical Political Economy Research Network (RN06)

CPERN Mid-term Workshop

30 July – 01 August, 2025

University of Helsinki, Finland

With support from the Department of Social Science, University of Helsinki

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME

Wednesday, 30 July 

18.00 – 19.30: Opening panel – Critical political economy and the time of monsters: understanding the present, imagining the future

Room: B214, hall 4

Gemma Gasseau (Scuola Normale Superiore) & Madelaine Moore (University of New South Wales): Narrating the Global Water Crisis: evidence from the 2023 UN Water Conference

Masoumeh Iran Mansouri (University of Birmingham, UK) & David J. Bailey (University of Birmingham, UK): How to be “anti-AI” in the 21st century: overcoming the inevitability narrative

Perla Polanco (University of Manchester): Shaping the South: 19th-Century British Economic Interests in Latin America.

Claudia Horn (Brandeis University): The Herbarium of Rosa Luxemburg. For a Radical Ecological Critique and Praxis

Thursday, 31 July

10.00 – 11.30: Panel 2A – “Greening”, Extractivism, Labour

Room: B308, hall 12

Franco Galdini (University of Birmingham): (Green) Extractivism and the Limits to Green Industrial Policy Copper, EVs, and Gendered Precarity in Uzbekistan’s Clean Energy ‘Addition’

Ilona Steiler (Tampere Peace Research Institute): Behind enshittification and greenwashing: a labour regime analysis of a ‘sustainable’ e-commerce platform

Rubén Vezzoni (University of Helsinki): The Ecological Political Economy of Actually Unfolding Green Transitions

10.00 – 11.30: Panel 2B – Digital capitalism, AI, and technology – control, refusal, and resistance  

Room: B314, hall 7

David Bailey (University of Birmingham), Saori Shibata (University of Sheffield), Bradley Ward (University of Southampton): Disruptive agency in digital capitalism: a national models of capitalism approach

Flávio Henry Ferreira (LUT University): Datafied intelligence: exploring subsumption through neurotechnology in labour

Laura Nordström (University of Helsinki): The power of big tech lobbying via the EU member states

Elio Di Muccio (University of Birmingham): The internationalisation of technology and the industrialisation of international relations: Karl Marx’s legacy in contemporary materialist technology criticism

12.00 – 13.30: Panel 3A – Metabolic Rift

Room B302, hall 5

Joseph Edward B. Alegado (Australian National University): Ambivalent views in degrowth and forms of alternative development: Exploring notions of “kauswagan” and “ginhawa” through the lens of zero waste in central Philippines

Fernando Javier Ruiz Iglesias (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona): Market fundamentalism in natural science: a case study on coastal ecosystems as (blue) carbon

Asma Mehan (Texas Tech University): Adaptive Reuse in Architecture: Fostering Social Justice and Environmental Sustainability in the Polycrisis Era

12.00 – 13.30: Panel 3B – Grassroots resistance, collectivism, and transformation from below

Room: B314, hall 7

Bernd Bonfert (EM Normandie Business School): Collaborate to transform: Do inter-municipal networks drive radical transformation in local food systems?

Caroline Demeyère (UCLouvain), Guillaume Delalieux (IAE de la Rochelle): Muzzling Civil Society Organizations through the Weaponization of Justice: The Case of ANTICOR in France

Flávio Henry Ferreira (LUT University): Energy Commons versus The Market: Shifting the Energy Transition Discourse Towards Community-Based Governance

Joe Sheldon (University of Liverpool): Retroducing the local and the lived: Pushing the boundaries of Critical Grounded Theory toward ‘lived experiences’ in spaces.

13.30 – 14.45: LUNCH

14.45 – 16.15: Panel 4A  – Authority, policing, and regression

Room B302, hall 5

Sara Swerdlyk (University of Toronto): Radical Rightwing Politics and Social Reproduction: Feminist Political Economy Perspectives on the Rise of the Far Right

Anil Sindhwani (Durham University): From Riots to Regeneration: Depoliticization, Austerity, and Resistance in Haringey Council’s High Road West

14.45 – 16.15: Panel 4B – Surplus or surplusification? Labour, energy, violence, and theory

Room: B314, hall 7

Ladidi Kolo (University of Helsinki): Human Trafficking, the New Face of Slavery in Northern Nigeria (withdrawn)

Julia Sachseder (Central European University): Decarbonizing Peace: Investigating the role of “green” energy projects in post-conflict violence in Colombia

Alexander Heublein (University of Bamberg): Surplusification as an explanation?

Mariam Khawar (University of Helsinki): (Re)Theorising heterodoxies: Labour in Islamic economic philosophy

16.30 – 18.00: Roundtable – Security, geopolitics, and political economy: the time of (new) monsters?

Room B214, hall 4

Chair: Teivo Teivainen (University of Helsinki)

Owen Worth (University of Limerick): World Order and the Era of Farce

Nicola C Short (York University): ‘Polycrisis’ and/vs passive revolution: a Gramscian analysis of the legacy of neoliberal restructuring

Jokubas Salyga (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley): Mapping the Origins of Neoliberalism in East-Central Europe: A Departure from Western-Centric Accounts

Yuliya Yurchenko (University of Greenwich): Towards a new accumulation regime? Ukraine, the Reform Matrix, and militarised neoliberalism

19.00: DINNER

Juttutupa (Säästöpankinranta 6): https://juttutupa.fi/?lang=en

Friday, 1 August

10.00 – 11.30: Panel 6A – Challenging climate injustice: green futures?

Room B302, hall 5

Johannes Jäger (University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna): Capital, labour and nature: The big backlash for internationally binding environmental and labour standards at the level of the EU and what to do about it

Julia Schwab (University of Glasgow): Imaginaries of Great Power: Visions of Hydrocarbon Futures in the Russian media discourse on Sakhalin-2

10.00 – 11.30: Panel 6B – The new international order and social reproduction

Room B310, hall 11

Silke Trommer (University of Manchester), Adrienne Roberts (University of Manchester): Governing the Gendered Inequalities of Food Trade

Carl von Mansberg (Erasmus School of Law): New standards of indirect expropriation: The return of NIEO principles to rebalance international investment law?

Emma Lamberg (University of Turku): Everyday political economy and social reproduction in a withdrawing welfare state

Kunal Munjal (IIT-Hyderabad): Sugarcane Commercialisation, Unequal Exchange, and Class-Based Differential Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study of Farm Business in a North Indian Village (2006–2023)

10.00 – 11.30: Panel 6C – Financial extractivism: debt, rent and monetary policy

Room B310, hall 7

Robin Jaspert (Goethe Universität Frankfurt), Kai Koddenbrock (Bard College Berlin): The Price to Pay: The Imperialism of Monetary Policy and the Transmission of FED and ECB Interest Rate Policies to West- and Central Africa.

Fraser Curry (King’s College London): Towards a minor theory of rent

Niklas Holzhauer (Radboud University Nijmegen, Roskilde University): Turbocharging Debt-Led Accumulation for a European Industrial Renaissance: A Conjunctural Analysis of the Substantive Orientation of the Capital Markets Union

Rex McKenzie (Kingston University London ), Christian Koutny (Hertfordshire Business School): Theorising the Hyper-Capitalist Urban Node (withdrawn)

12.00 – 13.30: Panel 7A – Care and Social Reproduction

Room B302, hall 5

Marjaana Jauhola, Violeta Gutiérrez Zamora, Ilona Steiler (all: Tampere University), Satu Sundström (University of Helsinki): Entanglements of care and violence: theorising on social reproduction and care through analysis of ‘interstructuring oppressions’

Evan Sedgwick-Jell: The Cultural Logic of Mental Health

João Viana: The limits of pro-market feminism in the era of social reproduction crisis

12.00 – 13.30: Panel 7B – Hegemony and resistance

Room B310, hall 11

Marco Guglielmo (University of Valencia), Bradley Ward (University of Southampton): It’s the People, Stupid! How Left-wing Leaders Disconnect from Popular Classes Boosts Capitalist Monsters.

Henry Snowball (University of London): Historic Bloc, Integral State, and the Centaur: a Theoretical Framework for Hegemony

13.30 – 14.45: LUNCH

14.45 – 16.15: Concluding Panel – From socio-ecological reimagining and resistance to alternative future-making: through radical thinking, language, culture, doing

Room B214, hall 4

Josef Mühlbauer (Universität Graz): Culture Wars, Liquid Modernity and the Struggle of Ideas Situating Ideology within the Polycrisis through the lense of Critical Peace Studies

Miria Gambardella (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona): Zapatista Critical Thought in the Time of Monsters: Resistance, Autonomy, and the Capitalist Hydra

Dominic Walker (University of Cambridge): “[C]e monstre délicat”: The decadent origins of Walrasian neoclassical economics

Sara Alarcón Serrano (Universitat Pompeu Fabra): Technological Imaginaries in Children’s Fiction: A Theoretical Exploration of Future Visions and Ideological Reproduction

16.15 – 16.30: Concluding remarks and farewell

16.45 – open end: World Political City Walk with Teivo Teivainen

Workshop format: All paper-givers should prepare to present their paper in 15 minutes. If you want to circulate your papers in advance please feel free to do so (email: cpernRN06@gmail.com). It will be possible to use powerpoint. The papers will be presented in the order on the itinerary, followed by Q&As for the remaining time for each session. The first person on the panel should act as chair and check the time keeping.

Venue: The workshop will take place at the famous and wonderfully located Metsätalo (“Forest House”): https://finnisharchitecture.fi/metsatalo-building/

We look forward to seeing you at the workshop!

Best wishes from the CPERN Board (Yuliya Yurchenko, Bernd Bonfert, Gemma Gasseau, Madelaine Moore, Adriano Cozzolino)