Contact
Teaching Summary
Undergraduate.
I convene and teach on the following third year undergraduate modules:
Geographies of Money & Finance (GEOG3012)
European Urban Geographies (GEOG3007)
Current PhD supervision.
Yuning Fang: Glocalised Higher Education Hub in the making? A case study of Shenzhen's HE sector (co-supervised with Professor Sarah Hall).
Past PhD supervision: Completed PhD theses.
Kieran Phelan (2021) Slow Fashion, Made in Britain: weaving the geographies of Harris Tweed (co-supervised with Professor Louise Crewe).
Graham Stack (2021) Riga as a black market' offshore financial centre (co-supervised with Professor Andrew Leyshon).
Alistair Grey (2020) Performing agriculture in post-Soviet Ukraine (co-supervised with Professor Andrew Leyshon).
Milo Bettocchi (2020) Squatting Utopia? Gender, Race, Sexuality, Class and Squatting in South London (co-supervised with Professor Steve Legg).
Alex Laxton (2020) 'Making home' in Build to Rent (BTR)/coliving - exploring an emergent young renter subject in the context of new institutional investment in the London rental market (co-supervised with Professor Peter Kraftl, University of Birmingham).
Joseph Hewitt (2018) Disability, development and financial exclusion: A study of the socio-economic barriers to accessing microfinance encountered by people with physical disabilities in Kampala, Uganda (co-supervised with Associate Professor Trudy Owens).
Anthony Udueni (2011) Mapping the social responsibility of small business as discourse and practice: An investigation of African and Caribbean microbusinesses in London and Nottingham, UK (co-supervised with Associate Professor Susanne Seymour).
James Corah (2010) The Economic Geographies of Religious Institutions (co-supervised with Professor Andrew Leyshon).
Thomas Wainwright (2009) The geographies of credit scoring and securitisation (co-supervised with Professor Andrew Leyshon).
Karen Lai (2007) Approaches to 'Markets': The development of Shanghai as an international financial centre (co-supervised with Professor Andrew Leyshon).
External examination of PhD theses.
Liam Keenan (2017) Financialisation, the brewing industry and the changing role of the pub in Britain and Germany (Newcastle University)
Camille Aznar (2014) Risk, financial exclusion and migrant workers in London (Queen Mary)
Paul Vallance (2008) Knowledge in the UK Videogames Development Sector: A Practice Based Approach (Newcastle University).
Research Summary
Research interests in the geographies of economic practice and knowledge. Epistemic communities, institutions, professions and spaces of the production and circulation of business knowledge and… read more
Current Research
Research interests in the geographies of economic practice and knowledge. Epistemic communities, institutions, professions and spaces of the production and circulation of business knowledge and praxis. Specific research has focused on three areas. First, financial services and money, and in particular the long-term insurance sector (life assurance, health insurance and pensions); socially responsible investment; and financial centres. The latter involving an engagement with wider theories of industrial clustering and agglomeration. Second, work on financial services professionals has led to a more general interest in professions, professionals and business knowledge communities. I am especially interested in the current importance of 'softer' professional groups such as human resources and marketing. Third, e-commerce and the increasing significance of software and information communications technologies for business. I am interested in the ways in which business practice becomes embedded in technology and the ways in which hardware and software themselves produce new economic practices and relationships.
Research grants.
2017-2020: Australian Research Council When Disaster Strikes: Under-insurance in an age of volatility (Co-investigator, PIs Kate Booth and Bruce Tranter, University of Tasmania, and Christine Eriksen, University of Wollongong, Aus$484,000).
2015-2016: Wellcome Trust Seed Award, Insuring Health Care in a Digital World (Co-Investigator, PI Professor Liz McFall, Open University, £34,068).
2015-2016: ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, Nottingham Financial Inclusion Action Plan (PI, £2,450)
2012: Financial Services Research Forum, University of Nottingham, Changing geographies of bank and building society branch networks in the UK: 1989-2012 (Co-investigator with Professor Andrew Leyshon and Dr Sam Meek, £2,278).
2012: Integrating Global Society Priority Group, University of Nottingham, Towards a critical geoeconomics of the currency wars (Co-investigator with Professor Andrew Leyshon, £4,000).
2011-12: EPSRC Fund, Swansea University, Disconnecting communities? University tuition fees, social exclusion, and the financialization of student subjectivities (Co-investigator, PI Professor Marcus Doel, Swansea, £19,650).
2010-12: British Academy, Calculating careless lives: An economic geography of the enhanced and impaired annuity market in the UK (PI, £3,963)
2008-9: Financial Services Research Forum, University of Nottingham, The buy-to-let market in transition? (Co-investigator with Professor Andrew Leyshon, £13,759).
2004 - 2005: Economic and Social Research Council, The Changing Geography of British Bank and Building Society Branch Networks1995-2003, (Co-investigator with Professor Andrew Leyshon and Dr Paola Signorretta, £45,174).
Recent Research Presentations.
French, S. 'Nottingham Financial Resilience Partnership', Nottingham Engaged 2018: Global Research, Civic Impact conference, University of Nottingham, 17th September 2018.
French, S. 'The constitutive outsides of academic labour and the social reproduction of Geography', invited speaker, Area Panel Reclaiming and Reimagining the Landscapes of Higher Education, RGS-IBG Annual Conference, University of Cardiff, Cardiff, 30th August 2018.
French, S. 'Domesticating flood risk: 'Flood Re' and the reimagining of home insurance in the UK', Institute of Australian Geographers, Auckland, New Zealand, 11-14th July 2018.
French, S. 'NFRP: REF Impact case study' at the Faculty of Social Science Research Event, 4th July 2018.
French, S. 'Nottingham Financial Resilience Partnership', invited panel discussant at the Re: Imagining Economies: Governing Inclusive Finance Workshop, Newcastle University, 27th June 2018.
French, S. 'Tackling Financial Vulnerability: Lessons from the NFRP', invited speaker at the 'Focus on Financial Vulnerability in Nottingham Stakeholder Engagement Workshop', Nottingham City Council Strategic Review, Nottingham Trent University, 25th May 2018.
French, S. 'Queering the Biofinancial subject: Figuring the child in the straight space-times of debt' in the Financial Life of Social Reproduction session, AAG Conference, New Orleans, 10-14th April 2018.