I am interested in understanding the social, cultural and political character of the global economic system. I do so by studying how international institutions and actors work to govern the global political economy. For some of my recent comments on current events, check out my blog.

My current research is organized around several related themes: a book project on The Rise of Provisional Governance? Expertise, Authority and the Transformation of Global Finance for Development examines the changes taking place in how the development finance is governed, focusing in particular on the emergence of four central governance strategies at the IMF, World Bank and among key donors: global standards, country ownership, risk and vulnerability, and results measurement. I am also working with Alexandra Gheciu on a collaborative project, The Public as Practice: Transformations in Global Politics , which brings together a range of scholarsto examine the transformation of the public dimension of global governance practices in the areas of finance, security, environment and development. A further project on Cultural Political Economy, pursued jointly with my colleague Matthew Paterson, seeks to understand the cultural constitution of contemporary economic practices

I have also become interested in the ongoing financial crisis, and have written a number of pieces reflecting on the sources of the subprime crisis and on some of the lessons that we might draw for the future.

This work draws on some of the ideas that I first developed in my book, The Limits of Transparency, which takes a historical look at the inherently ambiguous and unstable nature of international financial markets and suggests that governance mechanisms that accomodate a certain measure of constructive ambiguity are likely to more effective than those that deny the instability of markets seek to pursue perfect transparency.

In addition to pursuing my own research, I am also the coordinator of the International Political Economy Network, hosted by the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa.