Global Group Work: Cross-Border Student Projects on the International Political Economy of Everyday Life

Overview

In the UK, Australia, and Malaysia our students – including international students – have been profoundly impacted by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Students’ reflection of their experiences of how COVID-19 and responses to it provide a vantage point to consider questions about the relationship(s) between states and markets, and questions of who benefits from contemporary practices of global economic governance.

Scenario

International Political Economy units focus on the politics of international trade and investment regimes, global production chains, state transformation, the rise of global financial markets, and international development. However, undergraduates often consider these to be technically and theoretically complex topics that they regard as far removed from their everyday lives. This project aims to ‘flip’ this focus if IPE asking students to identify everyday objects and practices within the context of IPE.

Approach.

Over two years, students from Warwick, Monash and Monash Malaysia will collaborate on short articles drawing on the I-PEEL approach (the International Political Economy of Everyday Life), developed by Warwick academics. Students develop short articles on their experience and observations of everyday political economy of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Outcome

The i-peel.org site has been adopted widely across a number of academic institutions with an I-PEEL textbook coming out with Oxford University Press in 2023. As a group of educators with strong commitments to teaching innovation asking students to reflect on the impact of the pandemic across different sites of the global economy, including in countries of the Global South.

Principle Applicants