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) is pleased to announce a conference to be held at UBC, from July 21 to July 23, 2026. The conference theme is Globalizing Political Economy: Launching the Global Political Economy Network. The goal of this conference is 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 will take place in the Gage Multipurpose Room on the UBC campus.
There is limited space available for non-presenters to attend the conference. If you would like to attend, and are a non-presenter, please contact Andrew Jorgenson (andrew.jorgenson@ubc.ca), chair of the conference organizing committee, by June 15, 2026 to register. A limited number of hotel rooms are available at the Gage Suites on campus for conference attendees at a discounted rate. If you would like to reserve one of these rooms, please contact Andrew as soon as possible.
Below is the tentative conference program. A final version will be posted here by the end of May.
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)
9:15 - 10:15: Keynote – Matthew Mahutga (University of California – Riverside), Title TBA
10:15 - 10:30: Break
10:30 - 12:00: Panel
· William Thompson (Indiana University), Thomas Volgy (University of Arizona), and Eunsong Yoon (Princeton University), “Exploring the Role of Regionally-Centered Networks in Globalization: Are Regions Becoming More or Less Interconnected in Trade, More or Less Insular or Both?”
· 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), “Changing Subnetworks in the Global Political Economy”
· 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), “Nepal is Burning: The Limits of Dependent Development”
· Jose Morales (University of Sussex) and Samuel Cohn (Texas A&M University), “Multiplier-Led Development: New Evidence for the Reduction of Global Poverty”
2:45 - 3:00: Break
3:00 - 3:45: Group Discussion (Topic & Moderator TBA)
3:45 - 4:00: Break
4:00 - 5:00: Panel
· Nicolas Viens (University of British Columbia), “Power Embedded: Rethinking State Autonomy in the Age of De-Risking”
· Matthew Soener (University of Illinois – Urbana/Champaign), “Triangular World: Capitalist Crisis and Petrodollar Recycling in the 1970s”
5:00: Adjourn
July 22
9:00 - 10:30: Panel
· Barbara Wejnert (University at Buffalo), “Globalizing Political Economy to Combat Climate Change”
· Isak Ladegaard (Hong Kong University) and Orla Kelly (University College Dublin), “Sovereignty and Climate Strategies: The Case of Small States”
· Benjamin Leffel (University of Nevada – Las Vegas), “Dirty Opposition, Clean Support in Global Corporate Climate Lobbying”
10:30 - 10:45: Break
10:45 - 12:15: 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), “Different Logics of Modernity and the Choice of Future Energy: 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”
12:15 - 1:30: Lunch
1:30 - 2:15: Lightening Talks
· Feng Hao (University of South Florida), “Reducing Income Inequality to Decouple the Economy’s Contribution to Carbon Emissions”
· Jennifer Givens (Utah State University), “Militarization, World Society, and Ratifying the Paris Agreement”
· Jared Fitzgerald (Oklahoma State University), “Interlocking Treadmills: Militarization, Inequality, and Environmental Degradation”
2:15 - 2:30: Break
2:30 - 3:15: Group Discussion (Topic & Moderator TBA)
3:15 - 3:30: Break
3:30 - 4:30: Panel
· Lazarus Adua (University of Utah) and Brett Clark (University of Utah), “How Support of Right-Wing Politics Shapes the State of Climate Change Politics and Outcomes”
· Mark Shakespear (University of British Columbia), “Climate Change and International Identity: How Global Political Economy Influences How Nation-States Present Themselves at UNFCCC COP Conferences”
4:30 Adjourn
July 23
9:00 - 10:30: Panel
· Qian Wei (Wilfrid Laurier University) and Liam Swiss (Acadia University), “Identity Capture: Why Trade Globalization Fueled Polarization in Some Democracies but Not Others … Yet”
· Valentine Moghadam (Northeastern University), Christopher Chase-Dunn (University of California – Riverside), and Ethan Salazar (University of California – Riverside), “Waves of World-System Globalization / Deglobalization and Democracy / Autocracy”
· Jeffrey Kentor (Wayne State University), Anthony Roberts (Colorado State University), and Rob Clark (University of California – Riverside), “Is the World Economy Deglobalizing? Comparing Trends in Foreign Investment Flows and Stocks”
10:30 - 10:45: Break
10:45 - 12:15: Panel
· Roshan Pandian (Southern Methodist University), “Information about Global Inequality and International Policy Preferences”
· 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”
12:15 - 1:15: Lunch
1:15 - 2:00 Lightening Talks
· Nick Theis (Kenyon College), “Export Specialization and Global Environmental Health Inequalities: Connecting Ecologically Unequal Exchange to Population Health”
· 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), “Levels of the Game: Foreign Investment Dependence, Military Dependence, and Economic Growth: Multi-level Analysis of Complexity in the Global Political Economy”
2:00 - 2:15: Break
2:15 - 3:15: Final Group Discussion (Wrap up, Publication Plans, Next Steps for GPE, Moderated by Andrew Jorgenson & Conference Organizing Committee)
3:15: Adjourn