Specific research projects include: Geographies of the life assurance industry. The fields-of-learning of life underwriting, life marketing, IT, strategic management and actuarial communities-of-practice (doctoral research funded by the ESRC); An ongoing study of the socially responsible investment (SRI) sector. Ethics, social responsibility and new spaces of money and business; Professions and the rise of 'soft' epistemic communities. Researching the geographies of human resources management - as practice and professional project - in the UK; Current research exploring the geographies of e-commerce in the retail financial services, music, and fashion retailing industries (ESRC funded, see below).

Teaching responsibilities
Economic &Urban Geography
Urban Geography
Philosophy in Social Sciences
Research Design
Approaching Economic Geography

French, S. and Kneale, J. (2009) ‘Excessive financialization: Insuring lifestyles, enlivening subjects and everyday spaces of bio-social excess’, Environment and Planning D: Society & Space, 27(6): In Press.

French, S., Leyshon, A. and Thrift, N. (2009) ‘A very geographical crisis: The making and breaking of the sub-prime crisis’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy & Society, 2: 287-302.

Leyshon, A. and French, S. (2009) “We all live in a Robbie Fowler house’: The geographies of the buy-to-let market in the UK’, British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 11: 438-460.

French, S. (2009) ‘Risk: Mastering Time and Space’ in S.L. Holloway, S. P. Rice, G. Valentine and N. Clifford (eds) Key Concepts in Geography, 2nd Edition, London, Sage, pp. 392-404

French, S., Leyshon, A. and Signoretta, P. (2008) ‘‘All gone now’: The material, discursive and political erasure of bank and building society branches in Britain’, Antipode, 40(1): 79-101.