FASS Staff Profile

PROFESSOR DARIUSZ WÓJCIK
PROFESSOR OF FINANCIAL GEOGRAPHY
DEPARTMENT of GEOGRAPHY

Appointment:
PROFESSOR
Office:
AS2/#04-18
Email:
dwojcik@nus.edu.sg
Tel:
Fax:
Homepage:
http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/dwojcik/
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Brief Introduction

I am a financial and economic geographer. My interest in geography first peaked when I was 17 and won the Polish National Geography Olympiad in 1990, when Poland started transitioning to a democracy and a market economy, reshaping the map of the country and the world. Over the following years I studied for master’s degrees in geography and economics at Jagiellonian University and Cracow University of Economics. A Swedish government grant allowed me to do a masters in finance and banking at Stockholm University as well. After completing master’s degrees in 1996, I worked as an auditor for an international consultancy KPMG in Poland. Experience gained at KPMG, and financial support from USAID and Harvard School of Public Health helped me co-author my first book on Financial Management in Health Care, the first textbook on the topic in Poland.

In 1998 I received a Chevening Scholarship from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the UK and Open Society Institute in New York to study at University of Oxford under the supervision of the leading economic and pioneering financial geographer Gordon L. Clark. Further funding from Jesus College allowed me to finish a DPhil in economic geography focused on European financial integration and corporate governance, which was followed by a Junior Research Fellowship at Jesus College, and led to the first co-authored research book on The Geography of Finance. I was also teaching on European Union and transition economies as a visiting lecturer at the Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science.

After 2 years as assistant professor in the Department of Geography, University College London, I returned to Oxford in 2007 as associate professor at the School of Geography and the Environment, where I served as director of undergraduate and graduate studies, and fellow of St. Peters College, where I was the lead tutor in Geography, teaching across human and environmental geography. I was awarded a full professorship at Oxford in 2014. Over 20 years I have been awarded 16 grants with a total value of over SGD 6.4 million, funded by organisations in the UK, EU, US, China, and Australia. In 2022 I completed a €2 million grant from the European Research Council on Cities in Global Financial Networks and in 2023 I was a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Resident, finalising the first ever Atlas of Finance, forthcoming with Yale University Press in 2024.

I love contributing to the economic and financial geography community. In 2015 I hosted about 700 delegates at the Fourth Global Conference on Economic Geography in Oxford. In 2018 I co-edited the New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography with Gordon L. Clark, Maryann Feldman, and Meric Gertler. With Janelle Knox-Hayes I co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Financial Geography in 2021. I have co-founded and chaired the Global Network on Financial Geography, with nearly 1000 members worldwide, co-organised financial geography schools in Brussels and the MIT, and in 2023 became the inaugural editor in chief of Finance and Space journal.

On the advisory and enterprise front, I worked with companies, including WTW on long-term investment principles, and the Warsaw Stock Exchange on corporate governance standards. I also advised government organisations including the Polish Government on national urban and regional policy, as well as Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the New South Wales Government on financial centre development. I am a member of Concilium Civitas, a group of leading Polish scientists working abroad, who support democratic institutions, civil society, and contribute to public debate in Poland.

My research was reported internationally in Financial Times, Financial News, Forbes, Bloomberg, and the Sunday Times, as well as Polish, Irish, Swiss, Chinese, and Australian media. I spoke about the future of finance on BBC alongside the former Chief Economist of the IMF Kenneth Rogoff. China Daily interviewed me concerning the future of Shanghai as a global financial centre. I reported on the sorry state of gender diversity in the financial sector at SIBOS - the world’s largest gathering of finance practitioners. For my contributions to research and impact beyond academia I was awarded a Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2021.

In addition to being a Professor of Financial Geography at NUS, I am a Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography of Beijing Normal University, an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, and Associate Member of St. Peters College Oxford. In the past, I was also a visiting professor in Hong Kong and in Sydney.


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Teaching Areas

In the 2023-24 academic year I am teaching GE3257 Financial Geographies at undergraduate, and a module on Sustainable Finance at masters level.

My teaching approach is based on six principles: inspiration, clarity, critical thinking, global perspective, cross-disciplinarity, and learning by doing. I gained teaching experience as a lecturer at London School of Economics and Political Science and University College London, professor at University of Oxford, tutorial fellow at St Peters College Oxford, as well as visiting professor at Beijing Normal University and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. I also taught the week-long International Seminar in Economic Geography at Leibniz University Hanover, and at the Summer Institute in Economic Geography in Zurich. As chair of the Global Network on Financial Geography, I co-organised and taught at the financial geography schools in Brussels and the MIT. In 2024 I am co-organising the Summer Institute in Economic Geography in Singapore, in collaboration with Jamie Peck and Henry Yeung.

At Oxford, where most of my teaching to date took place, I designed undergraduate and graduate courses on: Globalisation and Regional Development; Economy and Transformation; Space, Place and Society; Geographies of Finance; Economy and Development; and Research Design. I led fieldtrips to Crete, The City of London, Amsterdam, and Brussels. My course on Geographies of Finance has been among the most popular elective courses at the department every year since its introduction in 2008. As the Tutorial Fellow in Geography at St Peter’s College I had overall responsibility for undergraduate students reading geography in all aspects of human geography, environmental geography, and research methods.

My teaching activities include the co-authorship of a textbook and three handbooks: Financial Management in Health Care, the first textbook on the topic in Poland; New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography co-edited with Gordon L. Clark, Maryann Feldman, and Meric Gertler; and The Routledge Handbook of Financial Geography co-edited with Janelle Knox-Hayes.


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Graduate Supervision

I have supervised over 20 doctoral and over 25 MSc projects at University College London and University of Oxford. In addition, I have examined over 30 doctoral projects internationally. My former doctoral students have gone on to become successful academics, researchers, consultants, and leaders of private and public organisations.

Current doctoral students:

Michael Drew on Home bias and investment

Cristina Di Luigi on futures markets for wheat

William Bratton on equity research

Xiang Ao on the Chinese urban system

Dasom Hong on Asian real estate markets

Mihaela Claudia Pop on income inequality in Central and Eastern Europe

Successful Doctors of Philosophy:

Tom Hashimoto on financial centre development in Central and Eastern Europe

Guanli Zhang on social changes in industrialised villages in East China

Xiaoyang Wang on Shanghai as an international financial centre

Jakob Engel on the political economy of commodity trading

Kristina Kaempfer on gender inequality in financial services

Marcus Wachtmeister on China’s environmental and climate policy in the automotive sector

Nicholas Howarth on the shift to a low carbon economy

Nihan Akyelken on transport infrastructure and female labour in Turkey

Steven Lew on the measurement and applications of ESG

Csaba Burger on the German pension system

Atif Syed Ansar on the evolution of infrastructure industries

Nicholas Kreston on Post-Keynesian geographies of finance and financial crises

James Ryan Hogarth on evolutionary economic geography of climate change

Justin Dargin on carbon markets in the Gulf Countries

Alexandra Yannias on aid effectiveness at the World Bank

Bill Ding on ESG in China

Vladimir Pazitka on financial centres in global financial networks

I am happy to receive questions about potential PhD supervision. Information on my current projects and research interests on the neighbouring pages should help with such enquiries.


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Current Research

I am finishing Atlas of Finance, the first ever book-size comprehensive visualization of the world of finance on all continents, through a unique combination of data science, digital humanities, economics, geography, and art. It shows how finance has evolved in a complex and often problematic relationship with civilization, contributing to inequality, instability, and environmental degradation, but how it can also improve lives and the planet and unleash human potential, and green growth through innovation. It is designed to initiate a lasting change in the way finance is seen and studied, influencing future research and public conversation about finance, and becoming a major resource for future education and research. It embodies an approach to finance in which people, places, and the environment, and so the well-being of humanity throughout the world, are at the center of attention. My co-authors are an interdisciplinary team of economists, geographers, sociologists, and political economists: Panagiotis Iliopoulos, Stefanos Ioannou, Liam Keenan, Julien Migozzi, Timothy Monteath, Vladimir Pažitka, Morag Torrance, Michael Urban; and prize-winning duo of cartographer James Cheshire and designer Oliver Uberti. The atlas will be published by Yale University Press in 2024.

I am working with Liam Keenan and Timothy Monteath on a new book mapping the changing world economy through changes in corporate control since 2000. The book will analyse data on mergers and acquisitions to explain one of the most eventful and confusing periods in economic history. We will argue that instead of the oft heralded deglobalisation or slowbalisation, we have witnessed a complex mosaic of coupling, decoupling, and recoupling, as companies and states embrace new technological and financial opportunities to respond to the challenges of the environmental crisis, the pandemic, and geopolitical tensions. For a taste, see related papers on the financial and pharmaceutical sectors.

I continue a series of papers on FinTech and its impacts on economy and society. After published articles on FinTech in Latin America (with Stefano Ioannou), India (with Julien Migozzi and Michael Urban), I have forthcoming papers on FinTech in China, Africa, Europe, and USA, FinTech and gender diversity, as well as on how FinTech can affect financial stability.

I continue research on the theory and methodology of financial and economic geography, building on the 2022 book on Global Financial Networks with Daniel Haberly, and my recent reports in Progress in Human Geography. As part of this research strand, I want to engage in more collaboration between financial, economic, and political geographies, with focus on the geopolitics of finance.

Finally, I am developing research on finance and sustainable development, building on collaborations with Csaba Burger, Theodor Cojoianu, and Felicia Liu among others. This includes projects on blue bonds, how central banks approach climate change risk, using technology to stimulate change in environmental behavior, and EV-battery minerals.


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Publications

BOOKS/MONOGRAPHS AUTHORED

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

EDITORIAL WORK ON JOURNALS

ARTICLES IN JOURNAL

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PUBLISHED REPORTS

OTHERS

Last Modified: 2023-08-16         Total Visits: 1938