I am a political economist researching the politics of global finance. I investigate post-crisis transformations of the global financial system and their impact on the global norms, institutions and governance that underpin the global economy.

Currently, I am a Senior Researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Principal Investigator of the DFG-funded ‘StateCapFinance’ research project which analyses national variety in the configurations of states, markets and finance within the global financial system. I am also a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation & Regionalisation. Before joining Goethe University, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the SCRIPTS Centre of Excellence, Lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin, a Senior Researcher at the University of Bonn as well as an ESRC Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. I also held positions as a visiting fellow at City University of Hong Kong, Fudan University, Peking University, Sciences Po Paris, Ewha Womens University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, NYU Shanghai and the London School or Economics. Next to my academic training, I also worked in finance for two years to obtain more practical knowledge of how financial markets actually functioned.

I hold a PhD from the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) at the University of Warwick in which I researched the transformation of Chinese capital markets and their integration into global finance. My dissertation was awarded with the Royal Geographical Society’s 2022 Economic Geography Research Group PhD Thesis Prize. Building upon this research, my current book project Capital Markets with Chinese Characteristics (under contract with Cornell University Press) highlights that capital markets are not uniform entities and that capital markets in China function fundamentally different from ‘global’ markets because the organisation of these markets is informed by different institutional logics. While the primary underlying principle of global markets is to create ‘efficient’ outcomes by enabling profit creation for private finance capital (liberal logic), in China the primary underlying principle is state control of market behaviour and directing market outcomes towards national development objectives (state-capitalist logic). Consequently, Chinese capital markets function differently, fulfil different socio-economic roles and lead to different societal outcomes than global markets. Going beyond debates on convergence, this book offers a novel perspective on China’s increasing integration into global markets.

Next to China, my research also explores the role of infrastructures in the politics of global finance as well as broader post-crisis transformation of the global financial system. This includes projects on the variety of capital markets, asset manager capitalism, methodological approaches to research finance, global finance in China, changing actor constellations and the impact of geoeconomic competition on the global financial system.

For this research, I draw on a multitude of methodological approaches. I have conducted extensive fieldwork in Beijing, Dalian, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Brussels, Chicago, Frankfurt, London, Seoul and Singapore, where I conducted 300+ expert interviews. I also collected ethnographic data from attending 40+ financial industry events and several longer periods of participant observation. In addition, my work draws on descriptive financial data – including the construction of datasets drawing on large bodies of text (e.g. annual reports, fund prospects) or by working with Bloomberg Terminals.

Beyond academia, my research was reported internationally, among others, in the Financial Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, BBC, Guardian, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and The Wire China as well as in Dutch, Belgian, French, Canadian, German, Spanish, Turkish, Brazilian, Indian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Romanian, and Taiwanese media. I have also written articles for public facing outlets like the Washington Post, The Conversation, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Phenomenal World or Jacobin. Moreover, I was invited to speak at financial industry events, I gave an expert testimony at the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) and my research was quoted in reports to the U.S. Congress, the European Commission and Munich Security Conference. For my interdisciplinary engagement, I was also awarded the 2024 PPE Young Scholar Award by the Institute for Social and Institutional Change (ISIC) at University of Witten/Herdecke as well as an Academy Fellowship by the Johanna-Quandt-Young-Academy.

I also think it is very important to contribute to the academic community. First as the founder of the Warwick Critical Finance Group and later as a speaker of the International Political Economy Working Group of the German Political Science Association (DVPW), I have hosted several international workshops, conferences and lecture series – very often with a focus on supporting early career scholars in their research and publication endeavours. I am also Co-Leader of the ‘Finance and Money‘ Working Group Leader and Management Committee member at the China in Europe (CHERN) Research Network, a Steering Committee member of the Sino-German Center of Economics and Finance as well as an Associate Editor of Competition & Change and (incoming) Editor of the Review of International Political Economy.