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Meet the esteemed members of our Advisory Board. Their expertise and guidance enrich our mission, ensuring the continued excellence and relevance of FinGeo's initiatives in the world of financial geography.

Aalbers, Manuel B. is professor of Human Geography at KU Leuven, the University of Leuven (Belgium) where he leads a research group on the intersection of real estate, finance and states. He has also published on financialization, redlining, social and financial exclusion, neoliberalism, mortgage markets, the privatization of social housing, neighborhood decline and gentrification. He is the author of Place, Exclusion, and Mortgage Markets (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and The Financialization of Housing: A Political Economy Approach (Routledge, 2016). He is the editor of Subprime Cities: The Political Economy of Mortgage Markets (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) and associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Urban Studies (Sage, 2010). Most of his papers can be downloaded from https://kuleuven.academia.edu/ManuelAalbers. Manuel is also one of the founding members of FinGeo.net, the Global Network on Financial Geography.

Aalbers, Manuel

Professor of Human Geography at KU Leuven, the University of Leuven

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Bassens, David is Professor of Economic Geography and Director of Cosmopolis: Centre for Urban Research at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (Belgium). He is Deputy-in-Chief of Finance and Space and one of the founding members of the Global Network on Financial Geography. His earlier work on financial geography has dealt with the geographies of Islamic Finance and European financial integration. His current financial geography work focuses on the geographies of FinTech and the intersections between finance and Global Digital Technology Networks. David has been contributing to debates on world and global cities in the past, retheorizing their role under conditions of financialization and digitization. He also remains committed to analysing and supporting alternative urban and regional development pathways anchored in foundational and circular economy approaches.

Bassens, David

Professor of Economic Geography. His research interests are...

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Clark, Gordon L DSc FBA is University Fellow at Monash University, Professorial Fellow Emeritus at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and Director Emeritus Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University. He has held appointments at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Law School, the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon University, and Monash University and has been an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the US National Academy of Sciences. With colleagues he is the author/co-author of many books and academic papers including Institutional Investors in Global Finance (OUP 2017) with Ashby Monk, Sovereign Wealth Funds with Ashby Monk and Adam Dixon (Princeton University Press 2013), Saving for Retirement (OUP 2012) with Janelle Knox-Hayes and Kendra Strauss, and The Geography of Finance (OUP 2007) with Dariusz Wójcik. His current research is about the global market for ESG investment products. He is also Chair of the IP Group’s Ethics committee, is an Advisor to Silicon Valley start-ups, is an investor in tech start-ups, and has been an advisor to various banks as regards their carbon footprints.

Clark, Gordon L

University Fellow at Monash University, Professorial Fellow Emeritus at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and Director Emeritus Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University.

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Cojoianu, Theodor is an Associate Professor in Sustainable Finance at the Singapore Management University, within the College of Integrative Studies. Theodor's work at the intersection between sustainability, finance, geography and data science has led him to be invited as a Member of the European Commission's Platform on Sustainable Finance, where he advises the Commission on EU sustainable finance policy and on HM Treasury's Green Technical Advisory Group. Theodor received his D.Phil in Geography and the Environment (Responsible Investing & Innovation) from the University of Oxford and his MSc in Carbon Finance (Distinction) and MEng in Electrical Engineering and Management from the University of Edinburgh. Theodor has interdisciplinary work has been published in accounting, finance, geography and environmental economics journals such as: Accounting Forum, Business Strategy and the Environment, Environmental and Resource Economics, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Financial Services Research, Journal of Financial Stability, Regional Studies, Small Business Economics and Research Policy. It has also been communicated for practice in high profile reports for international financial institutions looking to invest in the low carbon transition, and appeared in news outlets such as Bloomberg, Financial Times and Thomson Reuters.

Cojoianu, Theodor

Associate Professor in Sustainable Finance at the Singapore Management University

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Datta, Kavita is a Professor of Development Geography and Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration at Queen Mary University of London. Her interdisciplinary research spans migration studies and development and financial geography. Contributing to critical understandings of transnational migration, financialization and migrants’ financial practices, and adopting a gender and intersectional analytical lens, her research focuses on migrant labour, financial and food remittances and geographies of debt and credit. Her books include Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour and Migrants and their Money: Surviving Financial Exclusion in London. She is co-editor of the forthcoming Elgar Companion on Migration and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Datta, Kavita

Professor of Development Geography and Director of the Centre for the Study of Migration at Queen Mary University of London.

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Dörry, Sabine is a Senior Research Scientist at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and teaches at the Universities of Luxembourg and Bonn. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on financial geography, urban development and sustainability, examining how financial systems, technological change and global networks shape places, economies and pathways toward more sustainable futures. She was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and is a founding member of the Global Network on Financial Geography (FINGEO). Sabine serves as an editor of Competition & Change, chairs Luxembourg’s Climate Council (OPC) and is a member of the newly established working group on municipal finance reform at the ARL – Academy for Territorial Development in the Leibniz Association. In 2025, she published the book Future Finance. She holds a PhD in Economic Geography.

Dörry, Sabine

Dörry, Sabine is a Senior Research Scientist at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and teaches at the Universities of Luxembourg and Bonn

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Grote, Michael H. is Professor of Corporate Finance at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, a leading private business school in Germany. His main fields of research are financial geography, the organization of capital markets and private equity. From 2009 to 2020 he served as Vice President Academic Affairs for the School. He is a founding member of FinGeo and the co-director of the Frankfurt Institute for Private Equity and M&A. Since 2019, Michael serves as co-president of the Frankfurt Institute for Risk Management and Regulation (FIRM) and a member of the Management Board of the Society for Risk Management and Regulation. He consults small companies, startups and multinational enterprises as well as government agencies. Before, Michael was assistant professor at the Goethe-University (Frankfurt) and Metzler visiting professor for international finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Grote, Michael H.

Professor of Corporate Finance at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, a leading private business school in Germany.

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Lai, Karen is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Durham University (UK). Her research interests include geographies of money and finance, market formation, service sectors, global city networks and financial centre development. Her recent project examines everyday financialisation through the knowledge networks of financial advisors and consumers. She is current working on two projects regarding the global financial networks of investment banks and law firms, and how FinTech could be reshaping the roles of financial centres. She is on the Executive Committee of the Economic Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers), and journal editorial board member of Geoforum and Geography Compass (Economic section).

Lai, Karen

Professor of Geography. Her research interests include geographies of money and finance, market formation, service sectors, global city networks and financial centre development.

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Leyshon, Andrew is Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham. His work has mainly focused on money and finance, the musical economy, and the impact of digital technology on both, latterly focusing on the implications of the rise of a platform economy. He is the author and editor of numerous books that reflect these interests. They include Reformatted: code, networks and the transformation of the music industry (Oxford University Press, 2014), which explores how P2P networks and MP3 software helped remake the musical economy andMoney/Space: geographies of monetary transformation (with Nigel Thrift, Routledge 1997), which argued that not only does money have a geography, but that it is inherently geographical. He recently completed a research project on musicians’ use of live streaming platforms during the Covid-19 pandemic, with Allan Watson.

Leyshon, Andrew

Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham.

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Pollard, Jane is Emerita Professor of Economic Geography in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) and the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University, UK. She has degrees from Sheffield, McMaster and the University of California, Los Angeles. Previous posts include Lectureships in Economic Geography at Birmingham and Exeter University. Jane has been awarded a Fellowship of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers and a member of the Association of American Geographers. From 2015- 2023, she was a Lead Editor of the journal Economic Geography and between 2018-22 she worked on the Criteria and Assessment phases of the Geography and Environmental Studies Subpanel for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF). Jane’s research interests include postcolonial political economy, geographies of financialization and the economic, political and social constitution of financial networks. Her last research projects concerned the rejuvenation of sub-prime debt markets, institutional diversity in finance and credit provision and justice for low income groups. In addition to her journal publications, she has edited the Elgar Handbook on the Geographies of Money and Finance (with Ron Martin), Postcolonial Economies (with Cheryl McEwan and Alex Hughes) and Knowledge, Space, Economy (with John Bryson, Peter Daniels and Nick Henry).

Pollard, Jane

Professor of Economic Geography in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) and the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University, UK.

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Poon, Jessie P.H. is Professor of Geography at the University of Buffalo-SUNY. She is an economic geographer with research interests in trade and financial networks. She has published over 100 articles as well as authored/edited four books. Her publications in financial geography have focused on financial surveillance, tax havens, and Islamic finance. This work draws attention to illicit finance in tax havens as well as trade financing. It also attempts to understand the political economy of finance at different scales including the rescaling efforts of states such as Malaysia to establish Kuala Lumpur as a premier Islamic financial center. Jessie is a co-editor of Environment and Planning A and an editorial board member of several journals. She recently completed her term as Chair of Regional Studies Association.

Poon, Jessie P.H.

Professor of Geography at the University of Buffalo-SUNY.

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Rolnik, Raquel is a professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo. She is an architect and urban planner, with over 35 years of scholarship, activism and practical experience in urban planning, urban land policy and housing issues. In her career, she has held various government positions including Director of the Planning Department of the city of São Paulo (1989-1992) and National Secretary for Urban Programs of the Brazilian Ministry of Cities (2003-2007) . In May 2008, Ms. Raquel Rolnik was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council as UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing for a six years mandate, ending June 2014.During her mandate she was envolved with the impacts of finantialization of housing and urban policies in the world, which resulted in several articles on the subject and her book “Urban warfare: housing and cities in the age of finance” by VERSO UK.

Rolnik, Raquel

Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo.

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Website authored and coordinated by Dr. Claudia Affonso

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