Advisory board

Dr Julie Michelle Klinger (she/her)

Dr Klinger holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware and Associate Director of the Minerals, Materials, and Society Program. Focusing on the dynamics of global resource frontiers and space-based technologies with particular emphases in China, Brazil, and the US,

Dr. Klinger has conducted extensive ethnographic, qualitative, and quantitative fieldwork over the past 15 years. She has published numerous articles on rare earth elements, natural resource use, environmental politics, and outer space. Her 2017 Book Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes was awarded the Meridian Book Prize for its “unusually important contribution to the art and science of geography.”

Dr Georg Inderst

Dr Inderst is an independent adviser to pension funds, institutional investors and international organizations. He is one of the prime international experts on infrastructure investment and finance for developed and emerging countries. His work is based on extensive experience in investment management, economic research and pensions governance.

Previously, Georg was a Director of Law Debenture Pension Trust Corporation in London, the Head of  Global Asset Allocation and Fixed Interest at Foreign & Colonial (F&C) in London, and an economist at HYPO Capital Management in Munich.

Georg authored several key studies on infrastructure investment and social/green/development finance, working among others, with the OECD, the EIB, the ADB and the World Bank. He is a member of various international committees, a referee of academic journals, and the Chair of Judges of the IPE Awards for pension funds and the IPE Real Estate Awards.

Georg grew up in Italy. He received an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and a PhD in Economics and Social Sciences from the University of Vienna.

Prof Mike Raco

Prof Raco graduated from Royal Holloway University of London in 1994 with a B.A. Geography, and then completed a Ph.D. in the same department in 1997 on the topic of 'Business Associations and the Politics of Local Economic Development in the UK' under the supervision of Professor Rob Imrie.

Mike’s research focuses on the themes of the governance and planning of cities, the politics of urban diversity, and the changing nature of welfare states.  His background is in Planning, Geography, and Urban Studies and has published widely on the topics of urban governance and regeneration, urban sustainability, social diversity, and the politics of urban and regional economic development.

Mike is currently PI for an ORA-ESRC Project entitled: WHIG - What is Governed What is Governed in Cities: Residential Investment Landscapes and the Governance and Regulation of Housing Production.  The research examines the governance and planning of residential housing in London, Amsterdam, and Paris and the role of major investors and developers, as well as recently leading a team at UCL on an EU-funded project named DIVERCITIES that explored the governance and management of diversity polices in London in comparison with other cities in the EU and in Canada.

Recent works include: The Future of Sustainable Cities: Critical Reflections (with John Flint, Policy Press, Bristol); State-led Privatisation and the Demise of the Democratic State:  Welfare Reform and Localism in an Era of Regulatory Capitalism (Routledge, London); and Regenerating London: Governance, Sustainability and Community in a Global City (with Rob Imrie and Loretta Lees, Routledge, London

Dr Ágnes Szunomár

Ágnes Szunomár, PhD is a Hungarian economist who extensively looks at China’s economic footprint in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the head of Research Group on Development Economics at the Institute of World Economics, CERS, Hungary and associate professor at Corvinus University of Budapest. Her research focuses on East Asia, China’s foreign economic policy, including the relation between China and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). 

Agnes has more than 100 scientific publications, has led and participated in several international research projects. She is a member of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action "China In Europe Research Network” where she is the head of Working Group on “Strategic sectors and infrastructure developments", while she is also a member of China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe (CHOICE) network.

Dr Lela Rekhviashvilli

Lela is an early career researcher focusing on political-economy and urban geography with a regional expertise in post-socialist Eastern Europe and Eurasia, particularly South Caucasus and Central Asia. She has published widely on informal economic practices, urban transport and mobility, marketization and social embeddedness, contentious action and politics of public space. Her research increasingly focuses on contestations around infrastructure-led development and the role of infrastructures in imagining and (re-)claiming socialist and capitalist modernities.

As an invited lecturer at Universities of Jena and Leipzig she teaches on ‘Regional Geography of Post-Soviet Eurasia’ and ‘De/constructing Europe: Multiple perspectives on Europeanisation’. She serves as one of the coordinators of research area ‘Self-Positioning of Eastern Europe in a New World Order’ at Leibniz Science Campus »Eastern Europe – Global Area« (EEGA).