With financial support from the World Society Foundation (Zurich, Switzerland) and the Climate & Society Lab at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the newly formed Global Political Economy Network (GPEN) organized a conference that was held at UBC from July 21 to 23, 2026. The conference theme was Globalizing Political Economy: Launching the Global Political Economy Network. The goal of this conference was to highlight the Global Political Economy perspective on topics of current interest and study by sociologists and other social scientists. 

The Call for Papers (submission deadline was December 15, 2025) and background information can be viewed here. 

The conference took place in the Gage Multipurpose Room on the UBC campus, which is located in the Walter Gage residence building. 

Below is the final version of the conference program.

Globalizing Political Economy: Launching the Global Political Economy Network

Gage Multipurpose Room, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

July 21 – July 23, 2026

July 21

9:00: Welcome and Announcements – Andrew Jorgenson (University of British Columbia), and Christian Suter (World Society Foundation)

9:15 - 10:15: Keynote – Matthew Mahutga (University of California – Riverside), "How Can Sociology Contribute to the New Global Political Economy?"

10:15 - 10:30: Break

10:30 - 12:00: Panel

·        William Thompson (Indiana University), Thomas Volgy (University of Arizona), and Eunsong Yoon (Princeton University), “How Globalization Works Through  Regionalization: The Tripolar Architecture of World Trade”

·        Christopher Chase-Dunn (University of California – Riverside), Sakin Erin (University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma), and Paul Regier (University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma), “The Reconfiguration of Global Trade Subnetworks in Recent Decades”

·        Art Alderson (Indiana University) and Helge Marahrens (University of Notre Dame), “Global Networks and City Development, 1993-2015”

12:00 - 1:15: Lunch Break

1:15 - 2:45: Panel

·        Ang Li (Brown University), “Compositional and Scale Effects: How Foreign Direct Investment Shapes Informal Labor Markets in Latin America, 2000-2018”

·        Aryaman Sharma (Indiana University), “Domination and Dependence: Theorizing Small Peripheral States”

·        Jose Morales (University of Sussex) and Samuel Cohn (Texas A&M University), “Disarticulation and Economic Growth: New Methodologies, Hits, and Misses”

2:45 - 3:00: Break

3:00 - 4:00: Panel

·        Nicolas Viens (University of British Columbia), “States & Decarbonization: Rethinking Embedded Autonomy in the De-Risking Age”

·        Matthew Soener (University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign), “Triangular World: Capitalist Crisis and Petrodollar Recycling in the 1970s”

4:00: Adjourn

July 22

9:00 - 10:30: Panel

·        Barbara Wejnert (University at Buffalo), “Globalizing Political Economy and Political Governance to Combat Climate Change”

·        Isak Ladegaard (University of Hong Kong) and Orla Kelly (University College Dublin), “How Norway Leverages Its Petrowealth to Govern the Future”

·        Benjamin Leffel (University of Nevada – Las Vegas), “Global Climate Lobbying by Corporations and their Trade Associations”

10:30 - 10:50: Break

10:50 - 12:20: Panel

·        Annika Rieger (Singapore Management University) and Xiaorui Huang (Boston College), “The Business of Ecologically Unequal Exchange: A Multi-level Analysis of Corporate Emissions”

·        Keiichi Satoh (Hitotsubashi University), “The Logics of Divergent Modernities and the Choice of Future Energy Sources: A Global Comparative Analysis”

·        Taekyeong Goh (University of British Columbia), “When Labor Ages and Machines Rise: Demographic Change, Automation, and the Energy Intensity of Growth”

12:20 - 1:45: Lunch 

1:45 - 2:30: Lightening Talks

·         Nick Theis (Kenyon College), “Export Specialization and Global Environmental Health Inequalities: Connecting Ecologically Unequal Exchange to Population Health”

·         Feng Hao (University of South Florida), “Reducing Income Inequality to Decouple the Economy’s Contribution to Carbon Emissions: A Study of 112 Low- and Middle-Income Countries from 1990 to 2022”

·         Jared Fitzgerald (Oklahoma State University), “Interlocking Treadmills: Militarization, Inequality, and Carbon Emissions”

2:30 Adjourn 

July 23

9:00 - 10:30: Panel

·        Qian Wei (Wilfrid Laurier University) and Liam Swiss (Acadia University), “Captured by Culture? Trade Dislocation, Organized Labor, and the Production of Indentity Capture in Advanced Democracies”

·        Valentine Moghadam (Northeastern University), Christopher Chase-Dunn (University of California – Riverside), and Ethan Salazar (University of California – Riverside), “Regime Forms and Trade Connectedness: Waves of Autocracy and Globalization / Deglobalization”

·        Jeffrey Kentor (Wayne State University), Anthony Roberts (Colorado State University), and Rob Clark (University of California – Riverside), “Foreign Direct Investment in the 21st Century: Evidence of Deglobalization or Reconfigured Globalization?”

10:30 - 10:50: Break

10:50 - 12:20: Panel

·        Roshan Pandian (Southern Methodist University), “Information about Global Inequality and Americans' Meritocratic Attitudes and International Policy Preferences: Evidence from a Survey Experiment”

·        Jacob Richard Thomas (Corvinus University of Budapest) and Peng Huang (University of Georgia), “Cultural Affinities and Political-Economic Inequalities in the Global Visa-Free Mobility Networks, 1969-2010”

·        Anthony Roberts (Colorado State University) and Kevin Curwin (Colorado State University), “The Global Political Economy of International Development Discourse in the 21st Century”

12:20 - 1:30: Lunch

1:30 - 2:00 Lightening Talks

·       Ahmed Anees (Cairo University) and Omar Khaled Samir (Cairo University), “Global Economic Integration and Voting Behavior in the United Nations General Assembly”

·        Hiroko Inoue (University of California – Riverside), “The Decoupling of Geopolitics and Defense Capital: US Hegemonic Decline and Multi-Polar Maneuvering in the Global Arms Transfer Network, 1990 - 2018”

2:00 - 2:45: Final Group Discussion (Wrap up, Publication Plans, Next Steps for GPE, Moderated by Andrew Jorgenson & Conference Organizing Committee)

2:45: Adjourn