Ashok Kumar is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) of Political Economy.
He has published widely on a number of issues including urban theory, development, capitalist crisis, workers’ movements, global supply chains and identity.
His most recent book Monopsony Capitalism: Power and Production in the Twilight of the Sweatshop Age (Cambridge University Press) was the winner of the American Sociological Association’s 2021 Paul Sweezy Outstanding Book Prize and the 2022 Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award.
The book demonstrates that the production process under global capitalism is governed by a universal logic that shapes the structural bargaining power of workers.
Alongside his research and teaching, he has sat on the editorial boards of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space and the urban geography journal City. He’s currently a member of the editorial collective of the journal Historical Materialism.
His research has been funded through generous grants from a number of bodies including as a Fulbright Scholar and the Leverhulme Early Career Fellow.
- Recent Publications:
- Monopsony Capitalism: Power and Production in the Twilight of Sweatshop Age, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
- “A Dynamic Model of Global Value Network Governance” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. 2021. (with Giorgos Galanis)
- Recent Public Engagement
- TalkRadio: Should Tony Blair Return to Politics?
- Russia Today: Monopoly Capitalism to Monopsony Capitalism: is there any hope for workers?
- BBC: U.S. pulls out and imminent attack by Turkey on the Kurds
- Sky News: India’s Annexation of Kashmir
- Sky News: Tony Blair is a ghoulish war criminal