Helen Thompson
Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge and Deputy Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences. She has been working in Cambridge since 1994 and is currently a member of the Department of Politics and International Studies. Professor Thompson is interested in the Political Economy of the present predicaments facing western Politics including their relationship to geopolitics. Her research focuses on the Political Economy of energy and the long history of the democratic, economic, and geopolitical disruptions of the twenty-first century. Additionally, she is a regular panelist on the Talking Politics podcast and a columnist for the New Statesman.
Helen Thompson Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Professor of Political Economy and Deputy Head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Academic History
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Ph.D., International Relations
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Politics, Philosophy, and Economics
RESEARCH AND EXPERTISE
Professor Thompson is a highly respected academic and public intellectual.
A leading figure in the field of political economy, she is a scholar of international renown and her work has a profound impact on our understanding of the world.
Her present work is focused on the historical origins of the post-2008 economic and political world and the crises it is generating for western countries.
Her work focuses on the historical origins in the fallout of the economic and political crises of the 1970s.
More particularly her recent work covers the political economy of oil, Brexit and the eurozone crisis.
She has collaborated widely with SPERI including participating in numerous SPERI research projects, workshops and conferences.
MEDIA & PUBLICATIONS
She is a regular contributor to the media, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and The Economist.
She is also a frequent lecturer at universities and conferences around the world.
Her articles have appeared in the Review of International Political Economy, Research in Political Sociology, the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, New Political Economy, Government and Opposition, and economy and Society.
Her article ‘Inevitability and contingency: the political economy of Brexit,’ won the 2017 prize for best article in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.