The Socio-Economic Policy Analysis and Research Collective (SPARC) is an international research network examining the structural transformations of contemporary capitalism. Established in 2016 as EReNSEP and based at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, the network brings together scholars from economics, sociology, history, politics, law, and the technical fields that increasingly shape production, finance, and state capacity.
Costas Lapavitsas
is Professor of Economics at SOAS University of London. His main area of specialisation is monetary theory and the political economy of money and finance. For several years his research focused on the financialisation of capitalism, its characteristic trends, variable forms and manifold implications for contemporary society. He has also worked on the attendant crises of financialisation, including the Eurozone crisis, producing work that has had a considerable impact on the theoretical and policy debates.
Nicolás Águila
Nicolás Aguila is a political economist whose research focuses on monetary theory, monetary history (with a focus on Argentina), and the financing of a just ecosocial transformation. His publications have appeared in leading journals.
Hawnhee Bae
PhD candidate at the Department of Economics, SOAS University of London. She is also a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate for SOAS Department of Economics and General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) Educational Trust, funded by Innovate UK (UKRI). Research interests include financialisation, housing, pensions, and class reproduction. Organiser for the Lecture Series in Advanced Political Economy in collaboration with the New School for Social Research in New York and Forum for Real Economic Emancipation (FREE) in Tulsa. She’s been actively involved in organising fractional teaching staff at SOAS.
Yannis Bougiatiotis
is a PhD Economics student at the New School for Social Research. His research focuses on International Economics, Regional Integration, Renewables Capitalism, and Green Industrial Policy with particular emphasis on the dynamics and economic, social, and environmental implications of uneven development. He has presented his work at international conferences and global institutions, including the United Nations. His single-authored and co-authored articles have appeared in Monthly Review, Science & Society, Jacobin, and Edited Volumes.
Carla Coburger
is a monetary economist and lecturer at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Her research focuses on the evolution of money and the dynamics of monetary orders - from Imperial Money to Cryptocurrencies. Her work has appeared in the Review of International Political Economy, the Journal of Law and Political Economy and the Journal of Risk and Financial Management among others.
Sergi Cutillas
Juan J. Duque
Juan J. Duque researches digital capitalism and has published on contemporary capitalist finance, with a particular focus on cryptofinance. He holds a Degree in Philosophy from the University of Granada and a Master’s Degree in Economic History from the University of Barcelona, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of Zaragoza. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Barcelona, studying digital production processes.
Matteo Giordano
Dr. Matteo Giordano is a macro-financial economist specialising in monetary economics, financial systems, and the political economy of the Eurozone. His research focuses on monetary subordination, financial fragmentation, and the institutional architecture of money and banking. He has published in leading journals including Competition & Change, Socio-Economic Review, Journal of Financial Regulation, and Journal of Evolutionary Political Economy. His recent work also explores the interaction between cryptocurrencies and traditional monetary systems, as well as monetary hierarchies and financial integration. Methodologically, he combines critical political economy with quantitative macro-financial analysis and historical approaches to monetary systems.
Verena Gradinger
Verena is a political economist who works on the intersection of money and the state. She holds an MSc in Development Economics and a BSc in Business and Economics from WU Vienna as well as a BA in Political Science from the University of Vienna. She is currently doing her PhD on the role of sovereign bonds in money hierarchies at Global Climate Forum and FU Berlin.
Rae Deer
Rae is a PhD candidate at the Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, and has written numerous articles for Tribune magazine. His research concerns the intersection between the use of commercial credit in global production networks and financialisation in developing and emerging markets.
Hanin Khawaja
is a researcher at the New School for Social Research and a lecturer at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. Her research explores the political economy of the international monetary system (IMS), focusing on its hierarchical structure and the institutional and ideological forces that sustain the dominance of a singular world money. Her dissertation develops the concept of functional fragmentation to analyze how different currencies may increasingly specialize in distinct international roles, challenging the presumption of dollar singularity. Her current work examines how states are seeking to bypass dollar-centered financial infrastructures by developing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and experimenting with Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for cross-border payments, highlighting the implications of these initiatives for global monetary governance, financial stability, and systemic resilience.
Thanos Moraitits
Thanos Moraitis is a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research focuses on Macroeconomics, Econometrics, and Political Economy. More specifically, his specialization is in studying how demand-side policies shape medium and long-run output dynamics by utilizing both formal modelling and econometric methods. His work has appeared in Econometrics, and the International Journal of Finance & Economics, among others.
Nikos Pontis
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Economics of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He currently serves as an adjunct lecturer at both the University of the Peloponnese and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His research interests span Marxist political economy, heterodox monetary theory, the political economy of money and finance, core-periphery dynamics and dependency in the European Union, economic complexity and income inequality, as well as the socio-economic dimensions of austerity and the cost-of-living crisis.
Yuning Shi
Yuning Shi is Assistant Professor of Economics in School of International Relations, Xiamen University, China. She holds a PhD in Economics from SOAS, University of London. Her research interests include financialisation, political economy of money and finance, and political economy of SOEs with a special regional focus on China and Southeast Asian countries. Her research has been published on New Political Economy, Journal of Canadian Development Studies, among others