Mission Statement:

SPARC (Socio-economic Policy Analysis and Research Collective) is an international research collective of political economists working on contemporary capitalism, and global political economy. It builds on nearly two decades of collaborative work, beginning with Research on Money and Finance (RMF) in 2007 and continuing through the European Research Network on Social and Economic Policy (EReNSEP), established in response to the Eurozone crisis.

Across this period, the network has combined academic research with direct policy engagement. RMF produced widely cited interventions during the Eurozone crisis, contributing to debates on monetary union, sovereign debt, and economic adjustment. EReNSEP extended this work at a European level through international workshops, collaboration with political actors and public institutions, and contributions to policy debates, including at the European Parliament.

SPARC develops this trajectory into a more structured and forward-looking programme of research. Its work focuses on the central transformations shaping contemporary capitalism, including the persistence of financialisation, the reorganisation of global production chains, the hierarchy of world money, the rapid emergence of digital monetary/financial infrastructures, and the resurgence of imperialism. These processes are treated as interconnected elements of a single system that governs growth, inequality, state capacity, and international conflict.

The collective operates through coordinated research groups working on themes such as imperialism, digital capitalism, and financialisation. It produces joint research with a unified analytical voice, alongside individual publications, policy interventions, and public-facing work. SPARC offers both targeted interventions in current developments and longer pieces with rigorous analyses of wider challenges and transformations of the dominant system. The collective also accommodates contributions from outside scholars and activists, promoting dialogue and diverse analytical perspectives. 

SPARC’s purpose is to analyse the mechanisms that reproduce contemporary capitalism, to identify the challenges that question its reign, and to develop concrete alternatives that shift economic policy and institutional design toward production, social need, and the interests of working people.