A commentary on the implications of the financial crisis has been published in an unusually structured multi-authored piece in the Journal of Economic Geography.  It is part of a theme issue on financial geographies, the origins of which was a session organized by Ewald Engelen and James Faulconbridge at the Boston meeting of the Association of American Geographers in 2008.  The paper has four individually authored sections that have been knitted together in the order of the authors (which is why the word ‘I’ appears in what looks to be a co-authored paper). The full reference is below, and a pre-publication version of the paper can be accessed here.

Roger Lee, Gordon L. Clark, Jane Pollard, and Andrew Leyshon (2009)  The remit of financial geography—before and after the crisis
Journal of Economic Geography, 9, 723-747

This is the final submitted version of a chapter which focuses on the changing geography of financial services employment, focusing on the UK’s leading financial centres.  It was written with Shaun French (Nottingham) and Karen Lai (UBC), and is coming out in a book edited by Neil Coe and Andrew Jones:  The Economic Geography of the UK (SAGE).

The chapter can be downloaded by clicking on this link: Banking on Financial Services_French Lai and Leyshon.

The publication of my paper on the declining fortunes of the recording studio sector (Leyshon A, 2009, “The Software Slump?: digital music, the democratisation of technology, and the decline of the recording studio sector within the musical economy” Environment and Planning A 41(6) 1309 – 1331) led to another press release and a podcast.

This press release generated quite a bit of media interest, not least in that it gave me the opportunity to mention the high profile studio closures that have occurred since undertaking the research as a result of the problems facing studios identified in the paper. It included a feature in the Sunday Express and an article due to be published at some point in the Independent on Sunday.  But what was surprising was just how widely this story ran across a range of different media outlets as a result of one press release, which shows effectiveness of the UoN communications department, the power of the Internet, aggregator software and just how hungry media is for stories with perceived wider public interest (see list below).  Anything with a bit of doom and gloom I suppose … It has also made the Royal Geographical Society web page, which partly makes up for me missing the Annual Conference this year.

I was also called for another appearance on the Andy Whittaker Breakfast Show on BBC Radio Nottingham, although I didn’t feel the interview was a great success.  A previous item overran, which meant I only got a couple of questions before the 8.00 am news, and I was unable to respond with any authority to AW’s anecdote about a recent hit record which, apparently, had been part-recorded in a Nottingham toilet (er … no, not surprisingly,  I didn’t know about this).  I think next time I shall also avoid turning up in cycling garb on my way to work as I suspect being dressed in brightly coloured lyrca made it difficult for the host to take me all that seriously.

The interview with Andrew Burden went much better, and has been released as a University of Nottingham Podcast. It can be accessed by clicking here: http://communications.nottingham.ac.uk/podcasts.html.

Update: 25.9.09: An interview I did for BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours on the subject was broadcast today in a feature on the closure of recording studios and can be accessed via the Listen Again feature: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qps9

Media coverage

You can listen to me discussing the UK buy to let market with Andrew Burden in the latest University of Nottingham podcast.  It is based on research undertaken with my colleague Dr Shaun French and funded by the Financial Services Research Forum.  The research will shortly be published as an end of award  report for the Forum and as a paper – ‘We all live in a Robbie Fowler house’: the geographies of the buy to let market in the UK – in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations in the summer of 2009 (see post above).  The podcast can be accessed by clicking here.

You can also download a recording of me giving a much earlier version of the paper at a workshop on The Political Economy of the Sub-prime Crisis, held at the University of Warwick in September 2008, via iTunes.   To access the file, go to the iTunes Store and enter ‘Buy-to-Let, Financialization and the Geographies of Risk’ in the search dialogue box in the top right hand corner.  The download is free of charge.  (This search should also enable you to click through to recordings of all the academic papers presented at this workshop).

You can also, for a limited time only, also catch an interview I did on the research with BBC Radio Nottingham, which is available on the BBC iPlayer. Click here, select 11/05/09 and then move forward to 2:41:40 (I’m sandwiched between an item on the availability of hand washing gels in hospitals and the best places for men to meet women … )

I was very pleased to hear that Karen Lai has been awarded the 2009 RGS Economic Geography Research Group prize for best PhD in the sub-discipline. Her thesis, “Approaches to ‘Markets’: The Development of Shanghai as an International Financial Centre”, was undertaken here in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham.  I co-supervised her doctoral research with Shaun French. In 2008, Karen was awarded a prestigious Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Canada. Following that, Karen will be taking up a position in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore.

The School of Geography at the University of Nottingham is offering four new Research Masters from September 2009: Masters of Research (both MRes and MRes Sc), an MA by Research and an MSc by Research.

These courses are suitable for students who wish to focus primarily on undertaking a research-based Masters level qualification, with the option of taking up to 60 credits (a third of the degree) through taught modules. All students will be allocated two supervisors from the academic staff of the School of Geography, appropriate to research interests.  Meetings between students and supervisors will take place on a regular basis to provide advice and guidance and ensure that students are are fully connected to the research community in the School of Geography. These degrees offer the opportunity to experience what it is like to do a full PhD degree, but without the requirement to undertake three years of study.

Further details and application forms are available here or from Jenny Ashmore, Postgraduate Research Administrator, School of Geography, The University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD. Tel: 0115 951 5575. Email: jenny.ashmore@Nottingham.ac.uk. Potential applicants should give an indication of their area of research interest and include a brief research proposal with their application.

The School of Geography has been awarded an ESRC CASE Studentship to investigate the problem of financial exclusion in rural areas, in collaboration with the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC).  The studentship, which is fully-funded and pays fees and a stipend, will run from October 2009.  An advert appealing for suitable candidates will appear shortly (some useful pointers on eligibility requirements, which are more relaxed than conventional ESRC awards, can be found here).  The PhD will be supervised within the School of Geography by Dr Sarah Hall and Professor Andrew Leyshon, and by Dr David Land at the CRC.  Informal enquiries and initial expressions of interest should be directed to either Sarah Hall (sarah.hall@nottingham.ac.uk) or Andrew Leyshon (andrew.leyshon@nottingham.ac.uk).

Update 26.3.09:  see University Press Release, which has more details on this and other CASE awards at Nottingham.

Starting in September 2009, the University of Nottingham is offering an MSc in Financial Services and Society, for which I will be the Course Director.  This interdisciplinary Masters provides a research-led teaching and learning programme on money and finance within the context of the disciplines of Business, Geography and Law.  It will provide students with an understanding of contemporary monetary and financial systems and will equip students with critical evaluation of core theoretical and empirical developments within the social sciences to equip them for research related careers.

It is available both full-time (one year) and part-time (two years) and it is possible to apply for funding to support your studies sufficient to cover fees at the UK/EU rate.

For more details on the course and the funding opportunities available you can click here, e-mail me on andrew.leyshon@nottingham.ac.uk, or call me directly on 0115-8466147.

Geographies of the New Economy: critical reflections (2007), a book that I co-edited with Peter Daniels, Mike Bradshaw and Jon Beaverstock,  is now available in paperback through Routledge’s print-on-demand service.  While at $44 it’s much cheaper than the hardback (which is priced at an eye-watering $130) it still seems expensive for a paperback (well in the UK at least due to the collapse of the £ against the $!), especially when the point of POD is to lower costs by preventing the over production of books in the first place.  Nevertheless, given the subject of the book it’s appropriate and welcome that it is now available in a new format and at a lower price through the application of digital technoogy.

The leaks emanating from the private equity firm Terra Firma about the excesses they claim to have found at record company EMI has no doubt ensured that large helpings of schadenfreude have been hungrily consumed within the rest of the musical economy in recent weeks. Terra Firma bought EMI in the summer of 2007 and has been poring over its books and accounts ever since as part of the standard private equity project to reorganise a company so that it be flipped back onto the market in three to five years time at a profit. Terra Firma has a track record of buying companies with ‘failed’ business models ; ironically, it has already given the private equity treatment to Thorn, previously part of the Thorn- EMI conglomerate before it was demerged in the 1990s. This in itself should have sent some kind of message to the outgoing executives of EMI that Terra Firma hardly had a positive view of their managerial abilities. The revelations of extravagance approaching the bacchanalian seem to have so shocked the sober-suited bean counters Terra Firma that they were simply unable to keep it to themselves. Admittedly, the disclosure reveals business practices that one might think a tad unusual and indulgent, such as the £20,000 spent on candles to decorate a Los Angeles apartment used to entertain clients, and a £200,000 annual budget for fruit and flowers.

Over the last couple of years, as part of research I’ve been conducting on the musical economy, I’ve talked to large numbers of people who work in recording studios and associated activities, and it is safe to say that they do not hold recording companies and their employees in high esteem. Indeed, one senior member of this community was so dismissive of their abilities that he insisted that should anyone care to undertake an comparative analysis of management ability across the British economy he was confident that it would record company executives would be found way to the left of the bell curve. So, while those working at the sharp end of the musical economy would certainly have found Terra Firma’s revelations of interest, they probably would not have been all that surprised. The recording studio sector in the UK and elsewhere is under going a crisis of significant proportions, which has meant that the institutional base of the sector has been receding at a rapid rate. Many studios have closed and those that remain open often struggle to get by. Redundancies have followed while those that remained in employment have found their conditions casualised or degraded.

But in addition to spinning against the old management, the head of Terra Firma, Guy Hands, has also discredited the established record company business model, and argued that executives in the company were slow to embrace the possibilities of transforming the demand for downloads into a viable business model. In this respect, Hands echoes findings from earlier research which has argued that one of the problems for record companies was an industry-wide corporate cultural crisis, and the inability to think beyond the business model that has sustained the recorded music industry for the past 100 years or so. The problem is finding a new business model that will enable to the industry to sustain itself – and allow Terra Firma to get their money back and more. Ironically, one band that left EMI to strike out on their own rather than work for Terra Firma was Radiohead, but which at least provided conclusive evidence of one model that they can safely discard: the pay what you think it’s worth model. Customers wishing to download the album were invited to set their own tariff, plus an obligatory 45 pence to cover administrative charges. As many as 60% of people chose to pay nothing at all. Radiohead are rich enough so that this level of freeloading doesn’t really matter, and can easily make this back in ticket sales from a stadium tour. But it is hardly a promising business model for new bands without Radiohead’s brand recognition. Terra Firma’s urgent need to find a coherent business model for the music industry will be worth watching.

* ‘EMI’, The Sex Pistols, Virgin Records, 1977.