Intersections of finance and society 2023
Finance and Society Network
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 14-15 September

See the full Call for Papers here.

With inflation and interest rates on the rise, the age of expansionary monetary policy is over. At the same time, the global pandemic and a war on the European continent demand new policy responses that will have major repercussions. These developments take place in a global financial system that has undergone radical transformations over the past decade. Finance has become intertwined with the logic of the platform economy and social media to an unprecedented extent, giving rise to new patterns of financial intermediation and shifts in the relative status of financial centres. As climate breakdown worsens, politicians and publics increasingly look to the financial sector to offer alternative, more sustainable ways of investing – a responsibility that the sector has so far largely failed to live up to. As German Chancellor Olaf Scholz put it, we are living through a Zeitenwende – a ‘turning point’.

Leaving the United Kingdom for the first time, the 2023 ‘Intersections of finance and society’ conference will take place in Brussels, Belgium, the heart of European multilateralism and transatlantic policymaking. Key intersections between finance and society are shaped in Brussels. It is here where economic and financial sanctions following the war in Ukraine were formulated and enforced through key financial infrastructures like the Brussels-based SWIFT.

Building on the success of previous conferences, this year we seek to interrogate established and emergent social, organisational, and political forms shaping finance and society. Besides providing a platform to discuss new theoretical and empirical research, contributors are expressly invited to propose and debate existing and novel solutions for improving financial stability, expanding fintech inclusion, mitigating climate breakdown, and tackling the inequalities associated with financialisation.

The conference is organised by David Bassens, Reijer Hendrikse, Alex Rossiter, and the Finance and Society Network, with support from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

The application deadline is May 1, 2023. Please submit abstracts and proposals by to the following address: intersectionsfinancesociety@gmail.com. The editors of Finance and Society are encouraging paper submissions from conference participants. For more information on the journal please visit: http://financeandsociety.ed.ac.uk.