Professor Paul Langley

Contact Professor Paul Langley (email at paul.langley@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

Paul Langley is Professor of Economic Geography. He joined the Department in 2011, and was previously Professor of International Relations at University of York and Senior Lecturer in Politics at Northumbria University. Paul's Departmental roles have included Programme Director for BA(Hons) and MArts Geography, and Convenor of the Economy & Culture research cluster.

Paul's research interests centre on money, financial markets, and processes of financialization. He is the author of three monographs - World Financial Orders (Routledge, 2002/2013), The Everyday Life of Global Finance (Oxford University Press, 2008), and Liquidity Lost (Oxford University Press, 2015). His research has received support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), British Academy, and European Commission.

Twitter: @_paullangley

Paul is presently researching three spaces of finance:

(1) Digital finance

Focusing on the payday loan market in the UK, Paul was Co-Investogator on a recently completed ESRC project (led by James Ash, Newcastle, with Ben Anderson, Durham Geography, see http://www.debtinterfaces.org.uk/) that explored how credit-debt relations are mediated through digital platforms and apps. Publicatons include a methodological piece on researching digital interfaces (‘Unit, Vibration, Tone’, Cultural Geographies, 2017), an account of the experimental work of interface designers ('Digital interface design and power', Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2018), and a paper interrogating how borrowers relate to payday loans as money, not as credit, debt and finance ('Indebted life and money culture', Economy and Society, 2019). 

Paul’s work on digital finance relates to his wider interests in the marketing and consumption of retail financial products and services (e.g. edited special issue, 'Consuming Credit', Consumption, Markets and Culture, 2014). It is also being pursued through on-going research with Andrew Leyshon (University of Nottingham) into crowdfunding (Economic Geography, 2016, and Environment & Planning A, 2017), FinTech (New Political Economy, 2020), and Platform Capitalism (Finance and Society, 2017). 

(2) Carbon finance 

As part of REINVENT - a Horizon 2020 project with European partners and Harriet Bulkeley and Gavin Bridge from Durham Geography - Paul investigated how new forms of carbon finance are contributing towards the decarbonization of European industrial sectors including plastics, steel, and paper. The first publication from this work is now available ('Pluralizing and problematizing carbon finance', Progress in Human Geography, 2019), and related work is included in aforthcoming chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Financial Geography on 'Impact investors'.

Research into carbon finance broadens Paul's long standing research interest in financialization processes that variously promise to secure life via financial logics, techniques and practices. See, for example: book-length treatments of these issues in The Everyday Life of Global Finance (OUP, 2008) and Liquidity Lost (OUP, 2015); an article on the financialization of the urban infrastructures of life (‘Frontier Financialization', Economic Anthropology, 2018); and, a conceptual essay arguing for wide-ranging research into 'The financialization of life' (in International Handbook of Financialization, 2020, edited by Mader, Mertens & van der Zwan). 

(3) Social finance

In collaboration with colleagues from Durham Geography, Paul is Co-Investigator on an ESRC Urban Transformations Programme project (see http://community.dur.ac.uk/pursi/). His contribution to the project centres on researching novel forms of contemporary finance that are demarcated according to their social purpose (e.g. impact investment, social lending, community shares, crowdfunding) and which variously enable processes of urban social innovation. See, for example, Paul's article on ‘The Folds of Social Finance’ (Environment & Planning A: Economy and Space). 

This research develops from Paul’s previous work on the ambiguities of marginal and alternative spaces of finance, including subprime mortgages (Economy and Society, 2008) and, especially, ethical investment (in Abdelal, Blyth & Parson, 2010).

Cutting across his research, Paul also seeks to contribute to debates underway in economic geography and beyond by developing a broad-based cultural economy approach. This includes interests in the strengths and limitations of processual concepts common to cultural economy (e.g. marketization, valuation, capitalization, assetization), the ways in which economics can be understood to have performative and governmental power, how affective energies are mobilized in economic practices, and how the making of entrepreneurial and financial subjectivities features in contemporary neoliberal government.

Supervises

Paul welcomes doctoral research students interested in working on topics that fall broadly within the remit of his research interests. He has previously supervised students who have written theses on a wide range of topics, including: occupational pensions in the UK; sub-prime mortgage markets in the US and UK; ‘small states’ and ‘hot money’ in the global economy; financial stability and central banking; the rise of the US dollar as 'world money'; fiscal austerity and everyday life; private wealth management; and urban air rights markets. He is presently supervising student projects on distributed ledger technology and cross-border payments.

External Supervisions

• Miss Gemma Bone

Research Groups

Department of Geography

• Economy & Culture
• Geographies of Life
• Politics - State - Space (PSS)

Research Interests

• Geographies of money and finance
• Financialization
• Cultural economy

Selected Publications

Authored book

• Langley, P. (2014). Liquidity Lost: The Governance of the Global Financial Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Langley, P. (2008). The Everyday Life of Global Finance: Saving and Borrowing in Anglo-America. Oxford Oxford University Press.
• Langley, P. (2002). World Financial Orders: An Historical International Political Economy. Routledge.

Chapter in book

• Langley, P. (2021). Impact investors: The ethical financialization of development, society and nature. In Routledge Handbook of Financial Geography. Knox-Hayes, J. & Wojcik, D. Routledge.
• Langley, P. (2020). The financialization of life. In The Routledge International Handbook of Financialization. Mader, P., Mertens, D. & van der Zwan, N. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
• Langley, P. (2017). Financial flows: Spatial imaginaries of speculative circulations. In Money and Finance after the Crisis: Critical Thinking for Uncertain Times. Christophers, B., Leyshon, A. & Mann, G. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. 69-90.
• Langley, P. (2010). The ethical investor and embodied economies. In Constructing the International Economy. Abdelal, R., Blyth, M. & Parson, C. Cornell University Press.
• Langley, P. (2009). Consumer credit, self-discipline, and risk management. In Managing Financial Risks: From Global to Local. Clark, G., Dixon, A.D. & Monk, A.H.B. Oxford University Press. 280-300.

Journal Article

• Langley, P., Bridge, G., Bulkeley, H. & van Veelen, B. (Accepted). Decarbonizing capital: Investment, divestment and the qualification of carbon assets. Economy and Society
• Langley, Paul (2021). Assets and assetization in financialized capitalism. Review of International Political Economy 28(2): 382-393.
• Langley, Paul (2021). Economy and society in COVID times. Economy and Society 50(2): 149-157.
• Langley, P. & Leyshon, A. (2021). The platform political economy of FinTech: Reintermediation, consolidation and capitalisation. New Political Economy 26(3): 376-388.
• Anderson, B, Langley, P, Ash, J & Gordon, R (2020). Affective Life and Cultural Economy: Payday Loans and the Everyday Space-Times of Credit-Debt in the UK. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 45(2): 420-433.
• Langley, Paul & Morris, John H. (2020). Central banks: Climate governors of last resort?. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 52(8): 1471-1479.
• Langley, P. , Lewis, S. , McFarlane, C. , Painter, J. & Vradis, A. (2020). Crowdfunding cities: Social entrepreneurship, speculation and solidarity in Berlin. Geoforum 115: 11-20.
• Bridge, G., Bulkeley, H., Langley, P. & van Veelen, B. (2020). Pluralizing and Problematizing Carbon Finance. Progress in Human Geography 44(4): 724-742.
• Langley, P. (2020). The folds of social finance: Making markets, remaking the social. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 52(1): 130-147.
• Langley, P., Anderson, B., Ash, J. & Gordon, R. (2019). Indebted life and money culture: Payday lending in the United Kingdom. Economy and Society 48(1): 30-51.
• Ash, J., Anderson, B., Gordon, R. & Langley, P. (2018). Digital Interface Design and Power: Friction, Threshold, Transition. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36(3): 1136-1153.
• Langley, P. (2018). Frontier financialization: Urban infrastructure in the United Kingdom. Economic Anthropology 5(2): 172-184.
• Ash, J., Anderson, B., Gordon, R. & Langley, P. (2018). Unit, Vibration, Tone: A Post-Phenomenological Method for Researching Digital Interfaces. Cultural Geographies 25(1): 165-181.
• Langley, P. & Leyshon, A. (2017). Capitalizing on the crowd: The monetary and financial ecologies of crowdfunding. Environment and Planning A 49(5): 1019-1039.
• Langley, P. (2017). Finance/Security/Life. Finance and Society 3(2): 173-179.
• Langley, P. & Leyshon, A. (2017). Platform Capitalism: The Intermediation and Capitalization of Digital Economic Circulation. Finance and Society 3(1): 11-31.
• Langley, P. (2016). Crowdfunding in the United Kingdom: A cultural economy. Economic Geography 92(3): 301-321.
• Langley, P. (2014). Consuming Credit. Consumption Markets & Culture 17(5): 417-428.
• Langley, P. (2014). Equipping entrepreneurs: consuming credit and credit scores. Consumption Markets & Culture 17(5): 448-467.
• Langley, P. (2013). Anticipating uncertainty, reviving risk? On the stress testing of finance in crisis. Economy and Society 42(1): 51-73.
• Langley, P. (2013). Toxic assets, turbulence and biopolitical security: Governing the crisis of global financial circulation. Security Dialogue 44(2): 111-126.
• Langley, P. & Leyshon, A. (2012). Guest editors' introduction - Financial subjects: culture and materiality. Journal of Cultural Economy 5(4): 369-373.
• Chima, O.R & Langley, P. (2012). Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again: Financialisation and the Management of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis. Global Society 26(4): 409-427.
• Langley, P. & Leaver, A. (2012). Remaking retirement investors: behavioural economics and occupational pension funds in the UK and USA. Journal of Cultural Economy 5(4): 473-488.
• Langley, P. (2010). On the materiality of markets. Journal of Cultural Economy 3(3): 395-402.
• Langley, P. (2010). The performance of liquidity in the subprime mortgage crisis. New Political Economy 15(1): 71-89.
• Langley, P. (2009). Debt, discipline and government: Foreclosure and forbearance in the subprime mortgage crisis. Environment and Planning A 41(6): 1404-1419.
• Langley, P. (2008). Financialization and the consumer credit boom. Competition & Change 12(2): 133-147.
• Langley, P. (2008). Sub-prime mortgage lending: A cultural economy. Economy and Society 37(4): 469-494.
• Langley, P. (2007). The uncertain subjects of Anglo-American financialization. Cultural Critique 65 (Winter): 66-91.
• Langley, P. (2006). Securitising suburbia: The transformation of Anglo-American mortgage finance. Competition & Change 10(3): 283-299.
• Langley, P. (2006). The making of investor subjects in Anglo-American pensions. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(6): 919-934.
• Langley, P. (2004). In the eye of the ‘perfect storm’ the final salary pensions crisis and financialisation of Anglo‐American capitalism. New Political Economy 9(4): 539-558.

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Supervises

• Miss Jing Chu
• Mr. Cheng Fang
• Miss Xinquan Wu

Selected Grants