I'm a political economist. I work as an Assistant Professor in the Political Economy of Development the Centre of Development Studies, Department of Politics and International Studies, at the University of Cambridge.

Prior to that, I worked as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow at Uppsala University (January 2022 to December 2023).  My research project STASIS (Transformations of STate cApitalism in a poSt coronavIruS world) aimed at investigating the geography, economics, and politics of adaptive state transformations in Europe (and beyond) in the post COVID-19 environment. The project focused in particular on the reconfiguration of what academics, policymakers, and business commentators increasingly refer to as state capitalism, that is, the increasing reliance of governments on state enterprises, state-owned banks, state-sponsored investment funds, and other forms of state-controlled corporate entities, often in conjunction with techno-industrial policies, in order to achieve political and economic goals. Some of the key outputs are listed below. The project was generously funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska- Curie grant agreement No 101024448.

Before this research project, I held a postdoctoral researcher position at Maastricht University in the Netherlands (where I worked on the ERC-funded SWFsEUROPE project - September 2018 to December 2021) and a lectureship in International Politics at the University of Manchester (2018). 

I also held visiting positions at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo (June-Sept 2016), the University of Johannesburg (Oct-Dec 2016), and Sciences Po Paris (May-June 2022).

I'm an Editor of Developing Economics, a brilliant blog which features critical perspectives on development economics and political economy (+26,000 monthly visitors). 

I'm also a member of the recently created Second Cold War Observatory, a collective of scholars committed to developing nuanced understandings of how great power rivalry influences and shapes societies, economies, and ecologies worldwide.

My research and teaching interests are in the areas of global political economy, political ecology, the political economy of money and finance, state capitalism, economic geography, development and international capital flows, North-South relations, financialisation, the geographies of global finance, theories of the state, and the articulations between race/class/coloniality.

Some of my recent work has been published in peer-reviewed outlets such as New Political Economy, Review of African Political Economy, Review of Radical Political Economics, Geoforum, Development and Change, Human Geography,  Competition and Change, Political Geography, Science and Society, Geopolitics, Antipode, EPA: Economy and Space, Contemporary Politics, Economic Geography, Review of International Political Economy, Global Political Economy, and the European Journal of International Relations. 

I am on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Business, Finance & International Development book series (Bristol University Press), of the journal Global Political Economy, and of the journal Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.

I teach courses on the political economy of development, global finance, and international political economy.

Most of my articles are available on my Academia profile.

Here's my University profile.

I enjoy tweeting stuff about politics, economics, international development, and music here: @IliasAlami 

Education

PhD in Politics - The University of Manchester, UK

MSc Development Administration and Planning - UCL, UK

MSc Management - Toulouse Business School, FR 

Money Power and Financial Capital

My first book Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets (published in the RIPE series in Global Political Economy/Routledge) has been shortlisted by the British International Studies - IPEG association for the best 2019 book in IPE.

Here are some nice words about it:

"Theoretically sophisticated, historically grounded and politically alive, Alami’s study of the ongoing struggles of Brazil, South Africa and other Global South states to manage volatile cross-border flows of financial capital in the face of fractured local class relations is a razor-sharp contribution to the burgeoning critical literature on relations of money, power and space." - Brett Christophers, Professor of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden.

The Spectre of State Capitalism

Our forthcoming book called "The Specter of State Capitalism" (co-authored with Prof Adam Dixon) will be published by Oxford University Press, and should be out mid-2024. The book brings together 5+ years of research on the so-called "new state capitalism." The book will be open access and available here

This hotly-debated notion refers to the drastic reconfiguration – and in many cases, the enlargement – of the state's role as promoter, supervisor, investor-shareholder, and owner of capital across the world economy over the past fifteen years or so.

For a preview of the argument of the book, please refer to our various papers already published on this topic (listed below). Interested readers may also want to check out the special issues we recently edited in the pages of Contemporary Politics, and in Environment and Planning A (part I, part II, and part III).

Here are some nice words about it:

"In this transformative intervention, Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon take debates around “the new” state capitalism to a new place. Rigorous, grounded, and theoretically incisive, The Specter of State Capitalism deserves to be recognized as a signal contribution to geographical political economy."

Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia

and more generous endorsements by Cédric Durand, Heather Whiteside, Shahar Hameiri, Liam Campling, Marion Werner, Adam Hanieh, here

Peer-reviewed publications

2024

State property, venture capital, and the urbanisation of state capitalism, Dialogues in Human Geography, [in press] 

A partial conversion: how the 'Unholy Trinity' of Global Goverance adapts to State Capitalism, European Journal of International Relations, [co-authored with Jack Taggart] 

2023

"Racial capitalism, uneven development, and the abstractive powers of race and money" Environment and Planning A

"The Second Cold War: US-China Competition for Centrality in Infrastructure, Digital, Production, and Finance Networks" Geopolitics [co-authored with members of the Second Cold War Observatory].

"The ‘wicked trinity' of late capitalism: governing in an era of stagnation, surplus humanity, and environmental breakdown", Geoforum, [co-authored with Jack Copley and Alexis Moraitis]. 

"Ten theses on the new state capitalism and its futures" Environment and Planning A

"Making space for the new state capitalism part III: Thinking conjuncturally", Environment and Planning A, [co-authored with Heather Whiteside, Adam Dixon, and Jamie Peck].

"Making space for the new state capitalism part II: Relational spatiotemporality and uneven development", Environment and Planning A, [co-authored with Heather Whiteside, Adam Dixon, and Jamie Peck].

"Making space for the new state capitalism part I: Working with a troublesome category", Environment and Planning A, [co-authored with Heather Whiteside, Adam Dixon, and Jamie Peck].

2022

"The spiral of state capitalism: labour transformations or the 'whip of external necessity'?", Global Political Economy.

"Goodbye Washington Confusion, hello Wall Street Consensus: contemporary state capitalism and the spatialisation of industrial strategy", New Political Economy, [co-authored with Seth Schindler and Nick Jepson].

"International financial subordination: a critical research agenda", Review of International Political Economy [co-authored with Nina Kaltenbrunner et al.].

"The color of money at the financial frontier", Review of International Political Economy [co-authored with Vincent Guermond].

"Expropriation of capitalist by state capitalist: Organizational change and the centralization of capital as state property", Economic Geography, online first [co-authored with Adam Dixon].

"Special Issue introduction: what is the new state capitalism?", Contemporary Politics, online first, [co-authored with Milan Babic, Adam Dixon, and Imogen T. Liu].

2021

"Uneven and combined state capitalism", Environment and Planning A, online first, [co-authored Adam Dixon].

"Die Geopolitik von Finanzialisierung und Entwicklungspolitik. Interview mit Ilias Alami," Journal PERIPHERIE – Politik • Ökonomie • Kultur 162 (2-2021), 298-317.

"State capitalism and the global D/development regime", Antipode, 53(5), 1294–1318 [co-authored with Adam Dixon and Emma Mawdsley].

"Geopolitics and the 'new' state capitalism", Geopolitics, online first [co-authored with Adam Dixon, Nana de Graaf, Milan Babic, Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente, Ingrid Medby, and S-O Lee]

"State theory in the age of state capitalism 3.0?", Science and Society, Vol. 85, 2, (2021), 162–170.

2020

"The strange geographies of the 'new' state capitalism", Political Geography, Vol. 82, October 2020,  [co-authored Adam Dixon]

"State Capitalism(s) Redux? Theories, Tensions, Controversies", Competition and Change, Vol. 24(1) 70–94 [co-authored Adam Dixon]

2019

"Marx's Critique of Political Economy in Economic Geography", Human Geography, Vol. 12, Number 2, pp. 65-72

“Taming Foreign Exchange Derivatives Markets? Speculative Finance and Class Relations in Brazil”, Development and Change, Vol. 50, Issue 5, pp. 1310-1341

“Post-crisis Capital Controls in Developing and Emerging Countries: regaining Policy Space? An historical materialist engagement”, Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol. 51(4) 629–649

2018

“On the Terrorism of Money and National Policy-Making in Emerging Capitalist Economies”, Geoforum, Vol. 96, pp. 21-31

“Capital Accumulation and Capital Controls in South Africa: a class perspective”, Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 45, Issue 156, pp. 223-249

“Money-Power of Capital and the Production of New State Spaces: a view from the Global South”, New Political Economy, Vol. 23, Issue 4, pp. 512-529

Book Chapters

"New States Capitalism(s)", in Krista Nadakavukaren and Thomas Cottier (eds). Elgar Encyclopedia of International Economic Law.

"Afropessimism in Emerging Market Finance", in Bourne, C. Gilbert, P. Haiven, M., Montgomerie, J. (eds) (2022) Images of the Unseen / Colonial Debts, Manchester University Press.

“Global Finance Capital and Third World Debt”, in Cope, Z. & I. Ness (Eds) (2019). The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-imperialism, 2nd Edition, Palgrave Macmillan.

Book review

Respatialising finance: power, politics and offshore renminbi market making in London, Eurasian Geography and Economics, online first, 2023.

Geofinance between Political and Financial Geographies: A Focus on the Semi-Periphery of the Global Financial System, Economic Geography, Vol 97, 2021, Issue 3.

“Note de Lecture : Nature et Forme de l’Etat Capitaliste”, Actuel Marx, 2016/2, n° 60, pp. 180-181

2023

Hard truths about green industrial policy, Project Syndicate, available here

2022

Debating contemporary state capitalism: a reply to Carroll and Jarvis, Antipode blog, available here.

"Who's in control? Wall Street consensus, state capitalism, and spatialised industrial policy", Developing Economics, available here

2021

"Uneven and Combined State Capitalism: towards a research agenda", Progress in Political Economy, available here,

"Petrostates", Phenomenal World, available here

"A new Washington Consensus on the role of the state?", Developing Economics, available here

Podcast Interview: "Uneven and combined state capitalism", Global Development Institute Podcast, [with Adam Dixon], available here

Podcast interview: "State Theory for De-Orientalizing State Capitalism", Poliko: Conversations in Political Economy, available here

2020

"Colonial hangover à la française", Colonial Hangover Magazine, available here

"The Clash of Capitalisms?" (with Adam Dixon), openDemocracy, available here

"The Spectre of State Capitalism" (with Adam Dixon), Developing Economics, available here

"Facing a Liquidity Tsunami? Profit, Risk, and Discipline in Emerging Markets", Progress in Political Economy, available here, and reposted by Monthly Review online here

"Thinking Politically about Capital Controls", Marxist Sociology Blog, available here

2019 

"State Capitalism Redux?" (with Adam Dixon), Progress in Political Economy, available here

“Class matters: Global capital mobility and state power in emerging economies”, E-International Relations, available here

“Post-crisis capital controls in developing economies: regaining policy space?” Union for Radical Political Economics blog, available here

2018

“On the terrorism of money in emerging capitalist economies”, Progress in Political Economy, available here

“Revisiting capital controls: a class perspective”, Developing Economics: A critical perspective on Development Economics, available here 

2017

“Money-power and the capitalist state in the Global South”, Progress in Political Economy, available here 

2016

“Repolitisons la Monnaie !” (with Vincent Guermond and Caroline Metz), Revue Ballast, available here 

2015

“Is the world economy about to topple again?”, Manchester Policy Blog, Dec 10th 2015, available here