Staff profile

Jack Copley researches and teaches on the governance of global capitalism. He is interested in how states strategise to manage the dilemmas generated by capitalist economic development. One part of this research agenda is his work on the role of states in propelling the financialisation of the world economy. Drawing from declassified government archives, he explores how British governments in the 1970s and 1980s used policies of financial liberalisation to navigate the problems created by the 'stagflation' crisis. This will be published in 2021 as a book, titled Governing Financialization: The Tangled Politics of Financial Liberalization in Britain, with Oxford University Press. His current research examines the governance of the climate crisis. He analyses the challenges to the decarbonisation of the economy posed by the long-term slowdown in economic growth since the 1970s. 

Jack joined the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University in 2021. Prior to that, he was Lecturer in Political Economy at the University of Bath. He earned his PhD from the University of Warwick. 

• Capitalist development
• Economic governance
• Financialisation
• Climate change
• Value theory
• Liberal thought
• Marxism

Authored book

• Copley, J. (2022). Governing Financialization: The Tangled Politics of Financial Liberalization in Britain. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192897015.001.0001

Journal Article

• Copley, J. (online). Green Vulcans? The political economy of steel decarbonisation. New Political Economy, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2024.2373051
• Copley, J. (2024). Monetary sovereignty and the ‘Invisible Leviathan’: the politics of Marx’s theory of money. Global Political Economy, https://doi.org/10.1332/26352257Y2024D000000020
• Copley, J. (2023). Decarbonizing the Downturn: Addressing Climate Change in an Age of Stagnation. Competition & Change, 27(3-4), 429–448. https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221120986
• Alami, I., Copley, J., & Moraitis, A. (2023). The ‘wicked trinity’ of late capitalism: Governing in an era of stagnation, surplus humanity, and environmental breakdown. Geoforum, 153, Article 103691. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103691
• Copley, J., & Moraitis, A. (2021). Beyond the Mutual Constitution of States and Markets: On the Governance of Alienation. New Political Economy, 26(3), 490-508. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2020.1766430
• Copley, J., & Giraudo, M. E. (2019). Depoliticizing space: The politics of governing global finance. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 37(3), 442-460. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654418786249
• Copley, J. (2019). Why were capital controls abandoned? The case of Britain’s abolition of exchange controls, 1977–1979. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 21(2), https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148118819687
• Copley, J. (2017). Financial Deregulation and the Role of Statecraft: Lessons from Britain’s 1971 Competition and Credit Control Measures. New Political Economy, 22(6), 692-708. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2017.1311849
• Moraitis, A. B., & Copley, J. (2017). Productive and unproductive labour and social form: Putting class struggle in its place. Capital & Class, 41(1), https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816816682678

Other (Print)

• Copley, J., & Moraitis, A. Neoliberalism's Many Deaths and Strange Non-Deaths
• Copley, J., & Moraitis, A. Capitalism in Decline: Automation in a Stagnant Economy
• Copley, J. The Political Roots of Capital Mobility