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University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

Dr Dariusz Wójcik

Academic Profile

Dariusz Wójcik is an economic geographer specializing in research on finance and globalisation. His research focuses on exploring the geographical drivers and implications of globalization processes, particularly with regard to the development of financial markets and economic governance. He published two books, and has written numerous papers in the leading journals in geography and related fields, including Journal of Economic Geography, Economic Geography, Regional Studies, Environment and Planning A, and Annals of the Association of American Geographers, as well as chapters in edited books. He has guest edited special issues of journals on 'European Financial Geographies' (in Growth and Change), and on 'Geographies of the Financial Crisis' (in Environment and Planing A), and recently joined the editorial board of Economic Geography. Dariusz has given numerous invited lectures for conferences and seminars in geography and finance, including Cambridge, Dublin, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Seoul, Toronto and New York. His research was reported in The Financial Times, The Financial News, and by Bloomberg. Dariusz worked as a full-time consultant for KPMG and collaborated with the United States Agency for International Development (on financial management in the health care sector), the Warsaw Stock Exchange (on corporate governance), and Towers Watson (on sustainable investing), and the City of Busan (on transnational industrial clusters). Dariusz served on the International Advisory Board of the Third Global Conference on Economic Geography, Seoul, 2011, and is the principal organizer of the Fourth Global Conference on Economic Geography to be held in Oxford in 2015.

Dr Wójcik's recent book The Global Stock Market: Issuers, Investors and Intermediaries in an Uneven World (OUP 2011) offers a comprehensive picture of the global stock market by focusing on the relationships between issuers, investors, and intermediaries and how these relationships impact the performance of stock markets and the economy of cities, countries, and the world. The book uses rich data and global case studies to examine the rise of emerging markets, the impact of the global financial crisis, the revolution in the stock exchange business model, and the continued dominance of London and New York as financial centres. The Geography of Finance: Corporate Governance in a Global Marketplace (OUP 2007) co-authored with Gordon L. Clark tackles crucial issues regarding the emerging global market for corporate governance. It describes and explains the transformation of European corporate governance in the light of the imperatives driving global financial markets, using and innovative analytical and empirical framework.

Dariusz Wójcik has a Master's Degree in Geography from Jagiellonian University (1997), Cracow, a Master's Degree in Economics from the Cracow University of Economics (1996), and an MSc in Finance and Banking from Stockholm University (1996). He came to Oxford in 1998 as a scholar of the Open Society Institute and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and was awarded the University Studentship in association with Jesus College for a DPhil, completed in 2002 with a thesis entitled "Corporate Governance and Capital Market Integration in Europe: an Economic Geography Perspective". From 2003 to 2005 he was a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford and an outside Lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Between January 2006 and June 2007 he was a Lecturer at the Department of Geography, the University College London. He was appointed a Lecturer at the School of Geography and the Environment and a Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford in July 2007.

Current Research

Dariusz Wójcik's current work focuses on the global financial landscape emerging in the wake of the global financial crisis 2007-9. It is based on the premise that the crisis constitutes a major juncture in the history of capitalism, and major changes are necessary in the governance structure of the global economy, as well as in the social scientific approaches to explaining economy. His research combines insights derived from geography, economics, political economy, and other social sciences and is based on both quantitative and qualitative research methods, including elite interviews. The topics related closely to the global financial crisis include a review of competing interpretations of the crisis 2007-9; the role of the New York - London axis in the crisis; the role of advanced business services and the offshore world in the transformation of the world economy since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system; and the impact of the financial crisis on financial centres around the world. The more theoretical strand involves the future agenda of economic geography, including the intersection of economic geography with post-Keynesian economics, political economy, and accounting. Other topics include the geography of economic thought, the role of location in the underpricing of Initial Public Offerings on the stock market, the role of financial centres in the international monetary system, and the future of sustainable finance.

Selected Research Projects (since 2001)
  • Research Network on Geographies of Finance and Post-Socialist Transformations
    Funded by the Regional Studies Association, (2011- )
  • Geography of financial services and centres
    (2007- )
  • Global financial turmoil and the geography of stock markets: information and prices in Hong Kong and New York
    Financial support from British Academy; (2009-2010)
  • Geography of capital markets
    Financial support from Jesus College, Oxford; (2004-2006)
  • Geography of corporate governance
    In collaboration with Professor Gordon L. Clark; Professor Rob Bauer (Maastricht University); Financial support from European Science Foundation (partly); (2002-2006)

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

Dariusz convenes the Human Geography course for Prelims, and teaches on the Space, Place and Society course for 2nd year students, as well as the Geographical Environment: Human course for 3rd year students. He also convenes a special subject Geographies of Finance.

Postgradate Teaching

Dariusz teaches on the Economy and Development core module for the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy.

Current graduate students include:
  • Justin Dargin
    A carbon market for the Gulf - the development of an optimal carbon trading platform to regulate carbon emissions in the Gulf cooperation council
  • Kiran Rajashekariah
    Challenges of Change: exploring conservation based on neoliberal principles (A case study of lake conservation based on Public-Private Partnership in Bangalore)
  • Marcus Wachtmeister
    Modal changes in environmental policy instruments of China's transport sector
D.Phil. students successfully completing since 2001:
  • Nicholas Howarth (2012)
    The economics and politics of energy and climate change
  • Nihan Akyelken (2011)
    Capital and development in social and cultural contexts
  • Csaba Burger (2011)
    Occupational pensions in Germany - an economic geography
  • Stephen Lew (2011)
    Meaningful ESG impact measurement and integration
  • Atif Syed Ansar (2010)
    'New departures' in infrastructure provision: an ongoing evolution away from physical assets to user needs

Selected Publications

Books
Papers and Articles