SPERI hosted the workshop in collaboration with the editorial boards of the leading journals, New Political Economy (NPE) and Review of International Political Economy (RIPE). The workshop has led to a double special issue of NPE and RIPE on ‘Blind spots in International Political Economy’.
Today, the second Special Issue has been published in New Political Economy, following the publication of the first Special Issue in RIPE last month. Both Special Issues are co-edited by the organisers of the ‘blindspots’ initiative: Professor Jacqueline Best (University of Ottawa), Professor Colin Hay (SPERI, University of Sheffield), Professor Genevieve LeBaron (SPERI, University of Sheffield), and Professor Daniel Mügge (University of Amsterdam).
The NPE special issue is entitled, Blind Spots in Political Economy: Revisiting the Historical Foundations of Current Thought.
The abstract for the introduction, “Seeing and Not-seeing Like a Political Economist: The Historicity of Contemporary Political Economy and its Blind Spots,” is below:
Contemporary political economy is predicated on widely shared ideas and assumptions, some explicit but many implicit, about the past. Our aim in this Special Issue is to draw attention to, and to assess critically, these historical assumptions. In doing so, we hope to contribute to a political economy that is more attentive to the analytic assumptions on which it is premised, more aware of the potential oversights, biases, and omissions they contain, and more reflexive about the potential costs of these blind spots. This is an Introduction to one of two Special Issues that are being published simultaneously by New Political Economy and Review of International Political Economy reflecting on blind spots in international political economy. Together, these Special Issues seek to identify the key blind spots in the field and to make sense of how many scholars missed or misconstrued important dynamics.
All of the articles in the NPE special issue can be read here. Initially, all articles in both special issues will be available open-access.
The full list of contributors for both special issues is below.
| Special issue editors | Title | Institution |
| Jacqueline Best | Professor of Political Science | University of Ottawa |
| Colin Hay | Professor of Political Analysis | University of Sheffield |
| Genevieve LeBaron | Professor of Politics | University of Sheffield |
| Daniel Mügge | Professor of Political Arithmetic | University of Amsterdam |
| Special issue contributors | Title | Institution |
| Maha Rafi Atal | Postdoctoral Research Fellow | Copenhagen Business School |
| Kate Bedford | Professor of Law | University of Birmingham |
| Gurminder K. Bhambra | Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies | University of Sussex |
| André Broome | Associate Professor of International Political Economy | University of Warwick |
| Andrew Gamble | Professor of Politics | University of Sheffield |
| Marieke de Goede | Professor of Politics | University of Amsterdam |
| Eric Helleiner | Professor in Political Science | University of Waterloo |
| Kristen Hopewell | Canada Research Chair in Global Policy | University of British Columbia |
| Paul Langley | Professor of Economic Geography | University of Durham |
| Erin Lockwood | Assistant Professor of Political Science | University of California, Irvine |
| Matthew Paterson | Professor of Internatinal Politics | University of Manchester |
| Louis Pauly | J. Stefan Distinguished Professor of Political Economy | University of Toronto |
| V. Spike Peterson | Professor of International Relations | University of Arizona |
Elisabeth Prügl |
Professor of International Relations | Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva |
| Leonard Seabrooke | Professor of International Political Economy and Economic Sociology | Copenhagen Business School |
| Robbie Shilliam | Professor of International Relations | Johns Hopkins University |
| JP Singh | Professor of International Commerce and Policy | George Mason University |
| Kevin Young | Associate Professor of Political Science | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
Watch our short video about the landmark ‘blind spots’ workshop that SPERI hosted in 2019 here.