The current members of the Global Inequalities Research Group are:
Dr Zoe Pflaeger Young
Zoe Pflaeger Young has research interests in international political economy, gender and development. Her research has examined the global restructuring of the coffee industry, fair trade and gender relations. Zoe’s current research focuses on the politics of care and the crisis of social reproduction, looking at the status of women in academia as well as shared parental leave and childcare policy in the UK.
Dr Adam Fishwick
Adam Fishwick researches the impact of labour and social movements on development and inequality in Latin America, with a background in critical international political economy and development studies. He is also interested in understanding exploitation and the experimental practices of alternative modes of social and economic organisation that point to transformative pathways beyond global capitalism.
Dr Ben Whitham
Ben’s research focuses on the relationships and tensions between global (in)security and intersecting global inequalities. His most recent work, for example, explores the UK’s ‘cultural politics of crisis’ in relation to post-2008 austerity and post-2020 Covid-19 pandemic responses, investigating the relationship between state and structural violence, the rising tide of white nationalism in the ‘West’, and elite public discourse on these crises.
Dr Amina Easat-Daas
Dr Amina Easat-Daas’ research interests include the study of Muslim women’s political participation, politics in France and Belgium, and Islamophobia studies – with particular emphasis on its gendered dimensions. Islamophobia is increasingly globalised, results in injustices and it intersects with multiple globalised inequalities, such as those stemming from gender or ethnicity.
Dr Merve Sancak
Merve Sancak’s research focuses on the political economy of skill formation and inequality. So far, she has studied how the governance structures in global value chains and national institutions interact and affect Mexican and Turkish manufacturing firms’ practices for finding shop-floor workers, and the implications of these practices for workers and small firms.
Professor Jonathan Davies
Jonathan Davies is Director of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity. He led a major international study of urban austerity governance, discussed in his forthcoming monograph Between Realism and Revolt: Governing Cities in the Crisis of Neoliberal Globalism (Bristol University Press, 2021). He is interested in exploring global geographies of the intersecting dynamics of austerity urbanism, COVID-19 and ‘recovery’ strategies.
Dr Valeria Guarneros-Meza
Dr Valeria Guarneros-Meza’s background in public administration and development studies has informed her research on local governance, which has focused on securitisation, extractivism and urban living in the UK and Mexico. These three themes have worked as sites of action to help her unpack inequalities in power relations within local governance arrangements, but which are highly interconnected with global decisions driven by capital modes of production and discourses on participation and human rights.
Dr Pinar Donmez
Pinar’s research interests include crisis and restructuring, dynamics of depoliticisation and (re-)politicisation in policymaking and social relations, central banking and monetary policy, politics and policy of (higher) education, politics in Turkey and Europe, theories of state, critique of political economy and critical IPE, Marx’s social theory and Marxism(s).
Dr Simon Stevens
I am a political theorist / philosopher. Research interests include, though not limited to: Theories of power, biopolitics and taboo; Feminism, intersectionality and anarchism; Homelessness, universal basic income, hostile architecture and panopticism; Methods in political theory and storytelling; Decolonising pedagogy and restructuring the political theory canon; Ethics of digital technologies.
Dr Zainab Naqvi
Zainab’s research interests are focussed on judicial and legal responses to ethnic minorities in the UK from critical feminist perspectives including critical race and postcolonial feminism.
Zainab is also involved projects around decolonising approaches to feminist academic publishing through her work as a co-ordinating editor for Feminist Legal Studies.
Professor Rob Baggott
Rob Baggott is Professor of Public Policy at DMU. His research interests include: the social and economic determinants of health, universal health coverage, non-communicable disease strategies, the COVID-19 pandemic, social movements in health, and the influence of business interests upon public health policies.
Dr Adrian Bua
Adrian’s academic interests span democratic theory, public policy, urban studies and political economy. Currently he is interested in studying processes of democratisation and de-democratisation from a critical political economy perspective.
Dr Rajnaara Akhtar
Rajnaara Akhtar’s research is focussed on family law, and gender and law. The issue of inequalities arises in her work on gender and family in multi-dimensional ways. She is currently undertaking research in Qatar looking at women’s marriage and divorce experiences. She is further interested in the gendered nature of social reproductive labour, and how the gendered public/private division of space potentially impacts on civil engagement by women more broadly.
Dr Amarachi Amaugo
Amarachi’s main research interests border around international and comparative HRM; she has undertaken a number of projects in the area of workplace bullying and the transfer of HRM practices of MNCs from emerging countries.
The Global Inequalities Research Group 