karen-lai

Dr Karen Lai

Associate Professor

Affiliations
Affiliation	Room number	Telephone
Associate Professor in the Department of Geography	228	+44 (0) 191 33 41865
Associate Professor , Economy and Culture	228	+44 (0) 191 33 41865

Biography

I am an economic geographer with research expertise on financial geography. My research interests include geographies of money and finance, global cities, service sectors and market formation, focusing particularly on issues of financialisation, knowledge networks, and economic development in Asia and their wider production networks with Europe. My work also draws upon interdisciplinary ideas from economic sociology, international political economy, cultural studies and social studies of finance. I received my Bachelor and Master degrees in Geography from the National University of Singapore and completed my PhD in Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham. Prior to Durham University, I was previously based at the National University of Singapore and University of British Columbia (Canada).

I am on the journal editorial boards of Geoforum and Geography Compass (Economic section), and the international advisory board of the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography. I am a founding member of the Global Network on Financial Geography (FinGeo) and currently serve as Editor of the working paper series. I am also a long-serving committee member of the RGS-IBG Economic Geography Research Group (EGRG) and am currently the Social Media and Web Officer.

I am currently working on two strands of research:

1) Fintech and financial ecologies
FinTech, a short hand for ‘financial technology’, encompasses a new wave of companies that are harnessing technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchains, and platform infrastructures to change the ways that businesses and consumers make payments, lend, borrow and invest. FinTech is being actively promoted in many international financial centres as presenting opportunities for capturing new markets and developing new capabilities to bolster their financial centre status, including Singapore, Hong Kong, London and Luxembourg. I am developing this research in three directions. Firstly, the ways in which FinTech is reconfiguring existing global production and financial networks, which requires a rethinking of what constitutes value and lead firms. Secondly, a notable increase in positioning financial practices as entertainment and play are pointing towards a ‘gamification’ of finance. Thirdly, the growing significance of Chinese firms in digital and financial innovations and how they are influencing wider FinTech ecologies.

2) Global production/financial networks of investment banks and law firms
This study examines the global financial networks (GFN) of investment banks in two specific sectors — mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and initial public offerings (IPO) — to investigate how networks of underwriters, legal counsel, auditing and other due diligence has developed and changed over time. Over the past 20 decades, large transnational corporations (TNCs) have shifted more of their borrowing needs from bank-based financing to capital markets, creating greater demand for advisory, brokerage and trading services from investment banks and other advanced business services (ABS). Finance has become an increasingly important driver of global production structures and strategies, in terms of financial narratives, logics and instruments that shape the depth and extent of firms’ global activities. The study investigates the geographical and cross-industry variations in the networks of underwriters, bookrunners and auxiliary firms in terms of bulge bracket (often American) investment banks and more specifically their operational networks in Asia. Such GFNs could reveal insights into the relative roles and importance of investment banks and ABS firms in Asian GPNs, the significance of established corporate relationships in other financial centres on investment banking activities in Asia, and the impact of corporate clients on M&A and IPO processes and activities. Findings from the project is vital for understanding the financial dimensions that underpin the production of goods and services in the global economy.

A previous research project examined 'Financial subject formation and the financialisation of everyday life’. This study focused on financial intermediaries (relationship managers, financial planners etc.) and consumers (retail investors) and their financial subjectification—the ways in which they are moulded into ‘responsible’ and ‘knowledgeable’ investors through industry development and consumer education. Much of this growth in wealth management and insurance sectors have been driven by increasing affluence of the local population and wealth in the region (e.g. Indonesia, China, India), along with changing patterns of savings and consumption that are partly institutionally driven. Building on the literature on financialisation, I use the empirical findings to build theoretical arguments on financial ecologies and state-led financialisation.