The application for the

2024-2025 URPE Dissertation Fellowship is now open!

Deadline for submissions is May 31, 2024. The recipient will be announced by July 1, 2024.

CLICK HERE TO APPLY

URPE invites doctoral candidates in any discipline with an approved dissertation proposal in the area of radical political economics to apply for the URPE Dissertation Fellowship. The URPE dissertation fellow will receive $6500 to support their dissertation writing during the 2024-2025 academic year.

Applicants should submit:

1)      A cover letter describing their background in radical political economics and explaining how the fellowship would contribute to the completion of their dissertation;

2)      Curriculum Vitae;

3)      Their approved dissertation proposal;

4)      Two letters of reference (one of which should be from the dissertation committee chair). Letters should be submitted directly by the reference. Click here for the link.

The recipient will be asked to provide, at the end of the fellowship period, an account of the work completed during this period either in written form or in the form of a lightning talk to be posted on the URPE website, guidelines for which will be provided.

 

2023 URPE Dissertation Fellow

The Steering Committee of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) is pleased to announce that the 2023 URPE Dissertation Fellow is Kabeer Bora, doctoral candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Utah.

Mr. Bora’s dissertation utilizes empirical Marxian political economy, with an emphasis on time-series econometrics, to study imperialism, colonialism, and economic history. This three-essay dissertation initially examines the role of tea in the food habits of the British working class and its role in facilitating the extraction of surplus value during the Industrial Revolution. It argues that tea drinking was an aspect of social control during this period that supported increased surplus extraction by allowing for an increase in the length of the working day. The dissertation then investigates the imperial conquest of India, and the resulting transfer of wealth from India to Britain, not only as a cause of underdevelopment in India, but also as a source of development for Britain. Mr. Bora’s hypothesis is that this drain of wealth supported British development by countering the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in England during the period 1820-1914. The final topic addressed in the dissertation is the deteriorating terms of trade between the European colonial powers and African countries during the period 1880 – 1913. Mr. Bora proposes that this allowed colonial economies to acquire raw materials at progressively lower cost and supported their industrialization. Overall, the dissertation proposes to combine sophisticated historical analysis, innovative construction of new data sets, and rigorous econometric analysis using cutting-edge methodologies. This promises to be a valuable contribution to radical political economy.

As in previous years, the number of worthwhile applications for the URPE Dissertation Fellowship far outpaced our resources. We received applications from doctoral candidates at top universities on four different continents, and regret that we can support only one annual fellow when there are so many excellent applicants in need of support.

We also thank URPE members and supporters for their generous contributions to the organization and its initiatives, including this dissertation fellowship.

If you have not done so, please consider donating to support this dissertation fellowship in the future. This is a direct way to support young radical political economists at a crucial juncture in their careers.

2022 URPE Dissertation Fellow

The Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) is pleased to announce that the 2022-2023 URPE Dissertation Fellowship is awarded to Swati Chintala to support her dissertation Embedded in Informality: Structure of Work in the Indian Platform Economy. Ms. Chintala is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at New York University.

Ms. Chintala’s dissertation studies platform companies in India as a new source of low skilled, informal, service sector work. Increasingly researchers are investigating the impact of platform-based employment on labor markets, and this dissertation applies important concepts from radical political economics to the study of this emerging phenomenon. Previous research has primarily focused on developed countries, where platform companies are a relatively small part of the larger economy. But this research provides a critical analysis of the impact on workers in the global South, where nonstandard work carried out in the absence of work regulations is common. Ms. Chintala’s research employs three distinctive Marxian approaches to understand three key aspects of platform capitalism: labor process theory to identify the forms of control platform workers are subject to and the outcomes of these on workers’ skill, income, work tenure and flexibility; power resources approach to understand workers’ contentious actions, both individual and collective, directed at platform companies and the state; and Marxist and institutionalist theories of the state, to analyze the motivations of the state’s policies towards platform companies and workers.

Ms. Chintala’s dissertation is being supervised by Professors Vivek Chibber (Chair), Kathleen Gerson, and Juliet Schor.

2021 URPE Dissertation Fellow

The 2021 URPE Dissertation Fellow is Doguhan Sündal, doctoral candidate, Department of Economics, University of Utah. This candidate receives $6,500 (USD) to support the completion of his doctoral dissertation and an invitation to present this research on panels organized by URPE at future conferences.

This dissertation consists of three essays on the political economy of investment behavior by capitalist firms. Topics of these essays include a survey of approaches to firm growth from a complexity perspective, re-evaluation of profit rate and valuation rate impacts on the rate of investment rate with attention to secular stagnation, and a quantal response statistical equilibrium model of joint decisions of competition and accumulation. The unifying theme of the dissertation is the competitive dynamics of the US capitalism from the perspective of complexity theory and political economy.

The URPE Steering Committee is happy to welcome Doguhan Sündal to our group of dissertation fellows with the 2021 URPE Dissertation Fellowship.  Mr. Sündal’s application was selected from the pool of excellent dissertation proposals we received, and we regret that we are not able to support more of the outstanding doctoral candidates who applied. We are increasing our fundraising efforts to expand our support in the future for doctoral students working in radical political economics.  There is significant unmet need, and we ask members and supporters of URPE to assist us in meeting this need through donations, which can be directed specifically to support the dissertation fellowship initiative.

2020 URPE Dissertation Fellowship Announcement

The Union for Radical Political Economics is pleased to announce Srishti Yadav, doctoral candidate in the Department of Economics at the New School for Social Research, as our 2020-2021 Dissertation Fellow. Ms. Yadav is awarded this Fellowship and $6,500 (USD) in support of her dissertation “Agrarian Question of India: Past, Present, Future.”  Professor Anwar Shaikh is supervising her research as the chair of her dissertation committee.

The three essays that constitute Ms. Yadav’s dissertation consider the co-evolution of agriculture and industry, as well as the class dynamics of Indian agriculture. One aspect of this research explores the Green Revolution in India, considered as a potential resolution of the Agrarian Question, as a process of primitive accumulation.  Using evidence collected by fieldwork, Ms. Yadav examines relations of production and patterns of labor migration in a village that was an early adopter of Green Revolution techniques, and is also proximate to an industrial belt that has witnessed significant accumulation of industrial capital in the neoliberal era. Research on this village allows for the identification of micro-dynamics of agrarian change and capitalist development. The related methodological research that informs this research considers Kuhnian philosophy of science and contrasts this with a dialectical view of science and evolutionary materialism, which provides insights into the role of class and power in scientific paradigms.

The URPE Steering Committee is happy to welcome Srishti Yadav to our group of dissertation fellows with the 2020 URPE Dissertation Fellowship.  We selected Ms. Yadav from the large pool of excellent dissertation proposals we received, and we regret that we are not able to support more of the outstanding doctoral candidates who applied. We intend to increase our fundraising efforts in order to expand our support in the future for doctoral students working in radical political economics.  There is significant unmet need, and we ask that members and supporters of URPE assist us in meeting this need through donations, which can be directed specifically to support the dissertation fellowship initiative. Please click here to donate!

2019-2020 URPE Dissertation Fellowship

The 2019 URPE Dissertation Fellow is Ivan Rubinić, doctoral candidate, Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana (Republic of Slovenia). Mr. Rubinić is awarded this Fellowship and $5,000 (USD) in support of his dissertation “The Dynamics of Economic Inequality in Euro Area Based on the Marxist Theory of Exploitation.”  His dissertation is being supervised by Dr. Maks Tajnikar, University of Ljubljana.

Mr. Rubinić’s dissertation studies euro area economic inequality from a Marxian perspective. It investigates outcome inequality and inequality of opportunity, both the within-country and between-countries. Mr. Rubinić argues that within-country inequality results from differential ownership of means of production and exploitation, while between-country inequality arises from trade, which gives rise to unequal labor exchange. The dissertation investigates these euro area inequalities theoretically and empirically. It develops a model demonstrating that inequalities are the root cause of the euro area’s disintegration bias. This model also indicates that a Marx-based model has high explanatory power and is, therefore, an important tool for the investigation of economic inequalities. The empirical application illustrates the underlying economic factors that govern the euro area’s asymmetrical distribution of benefits, and allows the uncontrolled imperatives of international markets to overwhelm national decisions, efforts, and policies. This study will provide a basis for redefining the current, sub-optimal, policy decisions, with the final purpose of restoring the sustainability of the European social project and creating the source for advancement of integrational wellbeing.

The URPE Steering Committee is pleased to support Ivan Rubinić’s dissertation research with the 2019 URPE Dissertation Fellowship.  We also received many other excellent dissertation proposals, and regret that we lack the resources to support additional students. We are committed to our fundraising efforts in order to increase our support for doctoral students working in radical political economics.  There is significant unmet need, and we ask that members and supporters of URPE assist us in meeting this need through donations, which can be directed specifically to support the dissertation fellowship initiative.

In Solidarity,

URPE Steering Committee

2018-2019 Dissertation Fellowship

The Steering Committee of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) is pleased to announce that the 2018 URPE Dissertation Fellow is Samantha E. Sterba, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst.  Ms. Sterba is awarded this Fellowship and $5,000 (USD) in support of her dissertation “Neoliberal Capitalism and the Evolution of the U.S. Healthcare Sector.”  Her dissertation is being supervised by Dr. David M. Kotz (Committee Chair, University of Massachusetts Amherst) and Dr. Peter Spiegler (University of Massachusetts Amherst).

Ms. Sterba’s dissertation uses social structure of accumulation (SSA) theory to analyze the ways in which neoliberal restructuring of US capitalism has affected the evolution of key parts of the US health care system, including the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, hospitals, and medical care provider institutions. The dissertation also undertakes case studies of three reform efforts: the passage of Medicare/Medicaid in 1965, the failed Clinton Health Security Act of 1993-94, and the passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in 2010. Ms. Sterba’s dissertation systematically connects developments in U.S. health care to the evolution of the institutional structures of U.S. capitalism, and promises to contribute significantly to our understanding of the political economy of health care.

The URPE Steering Committee is pleased to award the 2018 URPE Dissertation Fellowship to Samantha E. Sterba.  We also continue to be encouraged by the significant response the fellowship receives from doctoral students.  We received many excellent dissertation proposals and regret that we lack the resources to support additional students.  We are committed to our fundraising efforts in order to increase our support for doctoral students working in radical political economics.  There is significant unmet need, and we ask that members and supporters of URPE assist us in meeting this need through donations, which can be directed specifically to support the dissertation fellowship initiative.

2017-18 Dissertation Fellowship Recipient: Ilias Alami

The Steering Committee of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) is pleased to announce that the 2017 URPE Dissertation Fellow is Ilias Alami, Ph.D. candidate, Politics, The University of Manchester, UK.  Mr. Alami is awarded this Fellowship and $5,000 (USD) in support of his dissertation “Post-crisis capital account policies in emerging capitalisms: regaining policy space? A comparison between Brazil and South Africa.”  His dissertation is being supervised by Dr. Stuart Shields (Manchester), and Dr. Adrienne Roberts (Manchester).

Mr. Alami’s dissertation provides a Marxist political economy analysis of capital-account policies used in Brazil and South Africa since the beginning of the recent global financial crisis, with particular attention to the specificity of capital accumulation and class configurations prevailing in these countries. He argues that understanding the uneven and conflict-ridden processes of policy-making is crucially important for developing progressive and sustainable forms of financial governance in emerging countries. Mr. Alami’s research makes contributions to the literatures on financialization, the political economy of financial statecraft and regulation, Marxian theories of the state and money, and the debates about more progressive forms of financial governance in emerging countries.

The URPE Steering Committee is pleased to award the 2017 URPE Dissertation Fellowship to Ilias Alami.  We also continue to be encouraged by the significant response the fellowship receives from doctoral students.  We received many excellent dissertation proposals and regret that we lack the resources to support additional students.  We remain committed to our fundraising efforts in order to increase our support for doctoral students working in radical political economics.  There is significant unmet need, and we hope that members and supporters of URPE will generously assist us in meeting it.

2016-17 Dissertation Fellowship Recipient: Robin Chang

The Steering Committee of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) is pleased to announce that the 2016-17 URPE Dissertation Fellow is Robin K. Chang, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto, ON. Mr. Chang is awarded this Fellowship and $5,000 (USD) in support of his dissertation “A Marxian Explanation for the Fast Rate of Growth in Healthcare Expenditure”. His dissertation is being supervised by professors Gregory Albo (committee chair, York Univ.), David McNally (York Univ.), and Robert Chernomas (Univ. of Manitoba). Mr. Chang’s dissertation studies the rapid growth in healthcare expenditures in developed countries using Anwar Shaikh’s theory of real competition. Working from this theoretical perspective, the dissertation uses applied input-output analysis of OECD, BEA and SC data to determine whether the healthcare sector experiences technological stagnation. (July 5, 2016)

You can learn more about Robin through the following links:

Book Author Interviews:

Canada, Left-Nationalism, and Alternatives (Interview with Paul Kellogg on Escape from the Staples Trap) https://urpe.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/canada-left-nationalism-and-alternatives/

Age of Austerity: Capital, the Financial Crisis and the State in Canada (Interview with Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman on The Servant State) https://urpe.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/age-of-austerity-capital-the-financial-crisis-and-the-state-in-canada/

Public Healthcare Against Privatization: Lessons From the British Struggle Over the NHS (Interview with John Lister on NHS For Sale) http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/1155.php

Healthcare in Canada and the U.S. In an ‘Age of Permanent Austerity’ (Interview with Robert Chernomas on To Live and Die in America) http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/996.php

URPE Newsletter Article:

Recent Developments in the Political Economy of Health and Healthcare: A Review of Three Works from a Radical Perspective (co-authored) http://urpe.org/content/media/UA_URPE_Past_Newsletters/urpe%20newsletter14%20spring_1.pdf

Book Review:

Book Review of Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, by Richard D. Wolff and Stephen A. Resnick. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2012. $35.00. Pp. 416. Science & Society July 2014, Vol. 78, No. 3: 406–409.

http://guilfordjournals.com/toc/siso/78/3

 

URPE invites doctoral candidates in any discipline with an approved dissertation proposal in the area of radical political economics to apply for the URPE Dissertation Fellowship. The URPE dissertation fellow will receive $6500 to support their dissertation writing during the 2020-2021 academic year.

Applicants should submit:

1)      A cover letter describing their background in radical political economics and explaining how the fellowship would contribute to the completion of their dissertation;

2)      Curriculum Vitae;

3)      Their approved dissertation proposal;

4)      Two letters of reference (one of which should be from the dissertation committee chair).

This program would not be possible without your support. Click here to make a donation to support the URPE Dissertation Fellowship.

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