Dr Remi Edwards (she/her)

My research is located broadly in the field of global political economy, with a specific focus on labour in global supply chains. I completed my doctoral research in April 2024, which explored the processes of struggle through which workers in agricultural industries shape private supply chain governance initiatives. I compared three contrasting initiatives to examine how different formal roles for workers in private governance are associated with improvements to or degradation of wages and working conditions. These cases included a worker-driven initiative in US agriculture, a global framework agreement and ethical certification initiatives in the Costa Rican banana industry. The project deployed labour regimes as a key lens to connect these initiatives to wider global and geographically specific economic conditions and relations. My more recent work looks to bring insights from literature racial capitalism and the interaction of race and class to bear on agricultural supply chains in capitalist development. I am also interested in cultures of consumption and the role of scandal in global labour movements. 

I have also worked on other projects based at SPERI including a piece of original research on the commitments of global garment corporations to living wage payment for workers in the sector with Tom Hunt and Genevieve LeBaron, the Re:Structure Lab series of policy briefs on forced labour in global supply chains, and a student-staff collaboration project on the political economy of the Weinstein scandal with Liam Stanley, Ellie Gore and Genevieve LeBaron.