This seminar forms part of a larger project led by Professor Daniela Gabor, and follows a first series in 2025.

What role does the state play in just low-carbon transitions? This project elaborates, conceptually and empirically, transformative state-centered models outside the macrofinancial constraints inherited from decades of financialised capitalism. It captures such models under the conceptual umbrella of the Big Green State, understood as a state with capacity to plan and finance decarbonisation through public ownership of strategic green infrastructure and manufacturing, alongside capacity to discipline carbon capital into shrinking its carbon footprint.  The project has two aims. It (a) rethinks conceptually state credit as an instrument of decarbonization, focusing on both the national conditions and the reform of the global financial system towards a green and just international financial architecture, and b) elaborates a novel theoretical account of the state/capital nexus for decarbonisation, focusing on new architectures of ‘green coercive institutions’ that could discipline private (financial) capital into decarbonization priorities.

Guest Speakers:

Seminar I: Leandros Kalisperas Chief Investment Officer, British Business Bank

Participants Include:

Ariane Agunsoye
Senior Lecturer in Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London

Carolina Alves
Associate Professor in Economics, UCL

Bruno Bonizzi
Lecturer in International Political Economy, City St George's, University of London

Jennifer Churchill
Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of the West of England, Bristol

Yannis Dafermos
Reader in Economics and Head of Department, SOAS University of London

Aydin Dikerdem
Councillor for Shaftesbury and Queenstown Ward, Wandsworth Borough Council

Sahil Dutta
Senior Lecturer, Department of International Politics, City St George's, University of London

Daniela Gabor
Professor of Economics, SOAS University of London

Vincent Guermond
Lecturer in Digital Innovation in Business and Society, Queen Mary University of London

Deepa Govindarajan Driver
Lecturer in Governance, Regulation and Risk, University of Reading

Chris Hayes
Chief Economist, Common Wealth

Hayley James
Senior Research Fellow, Aston Business School, Aston University

Annina Kaltenbrunner
Professor of Global Economics, Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds

Christina Laskaridis
Senior Lecturer in Economics, The Open University

Sini Matikainen
Director of Economic and Fiscal Policy, Centre for Economic Transition Expertise, London School of Economics

Jamie Morgan
Professor of Economics, Leeds Beckett University

Chris Newfield
ISRF Director of Research

Jeff Powell
Associate Professor in Economics, University of Greenwich

Thomas Raymen
Associate Professor of Criminology, Northumbria University

Charlotte Rommerskirchen
Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy, University of Edinburgh

Stefano Sgambati
Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy, City St George's, University of London

Carolyn Sissoko
Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of West England

Agnieszka Smoleńska
Director of Prudential Policy and Transition Finance, Centre for Economic Transition Expertise, London School of Economics

Simon Youel
Head of Policy and Advocacy, Positive Money