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Dr Amin Samman

Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy

School of Arts and Social Sciences Department of International Politics

Contact details

Address

Dr Amin Samman D515, Rhind Building
City, University of London
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
United Kingdom

Personal links

About

Overview

Amin Samman is Research Director in the Department of International Politics and co-Director of the City Political Economy Research Centre.

His own research addresses the temporal, historical, and existential aspects of contemporary capitalism, with an emphasis on how these relate to the workings of money, debt, and finance. He is the author of History in Financial Times (Stanford University Press, 2019) and numerous articles in journals of political economy, social theory, economic sociology, and cultural studies.

Dr Samman is actively involved in fostering cutting-edge research in the field of 'finance and society' studies. He is co-founder and editor of the journal, Finance and Society, as well as co-founder and chair of the Finance and Society Network, which provides a platform for collaboration between scholars from across the social sciences and humanities with those working on the fringes of conventional academia, including visual and performance artists, activists, and practitioners.

Qualifications

  1. PhD in International Political Economy, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, 2008 – 2012
  2. MSc in Politics of the World Economy, London School of Economics, United Kingdom, 2005 – 2006
  3. BSc in Economics, University College London, United Kingdom, 2002 – 2005

Teaching

Dr Samman convenes a core undergraduate module in international political economy, as well as advanced electives in critical theory and cultural economy.

IP2022: States and Markets in an Era of Globalisation
IP3033: Technology, Money, Power
IPM124: Cultures of Capitalism

Research

Past research

Crisis theory
Financial history and crisis
Historical theory and method
Philosophy of time and history
History and politics of IPE theory
Constructivist and cultural political economy approaches

Current research

Economic theology
History of economic thought
Libidinal political economy
Critical theory and philosophy of technology
Religion, magic, and the occult

Areas for supervision

Any of the above

Publications

Publications by category

Book

  1. Samman, A. (2019). History in Financial Times. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-5036-0945-7.

Chapter

  1. Samman, A. and Seabrooke, L. (2016). International Political Economy. In Guillaume, X. and Bilgin, P. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of International Political Sociology (pp. 46–59). London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-73225-3.

Internet publication

  1. Samman, A. (2015). Money's other worlds: On the magical underpinnings of our ostensibly rational economies. Stanford University Press Blog.

Journal articles (13)

  1. Samman, A. (2020). Strange loops: Producing history in financial times. Finance and Society, 6(2), pp. 148–56. doi:10.2218/finsoc.v6i2.5276.
  2. Samman, A. (2020). Eternal return on capital: nihilistic repetition in the asset economy. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory pp. 1–17. doi:10.1080/1600910x.2020.1763416.
  3. Samman, A. (2016). Conjuring the spirit of multilateralism: Histories of crisis management during the ‘great credit crash’. Review of International Studies, 42(2), pp. 227–246. doi:10.1017/S0260210515000133.
  4. Samman, A. (2016). The specter of capital. Journal of Cultural Economy, 9(1), pp. 108–114. doi:10.1080/17530350.2015.1100650.
  5. Samman, A. (2015). Crisis theory and the historical imagination. Review of International Political Economy, 22(5), pp. 966–995. doi:10.1080/09692290.2015.1011682.
  6. Samman, A., Coombs, N, and Cameron, A, (2015). For a post-disciplinary study of finance and society. Finance and Society, 1(1), pp. 1–5. doi:10.2218/finsoc.v1i1.1366.
  7. Samman, A. (2015). Introduction: Money's other worlds. Finance and Society, 1(2), pp. 23–26. doi:10.2218/finsoc.v1i2.1382.
  8. Samman, A. (2014). Making financial history: The crisis of 2008 and the return of the past. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 42(2), pp. 309–330. doi:10.1177/0305829813511866.
  9. Samman, A. (2012). The 1930s as black mirror: Visions of historical repetition in the global financial press, 2007-2009. Journal of Cultural Economy, 5(2), pp. 213–229. doi:10.1080/17530350.2012.660792.
  10. Samman, A. (2011). The idea of crisis. Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, 4, pp. 4–9.
  11. Samman, A. (2011). History in finance and fiction in history. economic sociology_the european electronic newsletter, 12(3), pp. 26–34.
  12. Samman, A. (2008). Imagining East Asia. Naked Punch Review, 10, pp. 74–81.
  13. Samman, A. and Sgambati, S. Financial eschatology and the libidinal economy of leverage. Theory, Culture & Society. doi:10.1177/02632764211070805.

Professional activities

Editorial activity (4)

  1. Finance and Society, Founding editor, 2015 – present.
  2. Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Editor, 2010 – 2014.
  3. Under/Current Magazine, Writing editor, 2008 – 2010.
  4. Naked Punch: The Engaged Review of Contemporary Art and Thought, Assistant editor, 2007 – 2009.

Other

  1. Founder and chair, Finance and Society Network (Jan 2018 – present).