Nicola Phillips joined the Department in May 2012 as a Professor in Political Economy, and is the Head of Department.

After completing an MSc in Comparative Government and a PhD in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, her first post was as a lecturer in International Political Economy at the University of Warwick. She moved to the University of Manchester in 2002, initially to take up a Hallsworth Research Fellowship, and she was promoted there to Professor in 2006. She has held visiting positions and fellowships at a range of institutions across the world, most recently at the Australian National University and the University of British Columbia.

Professor Phillips is an elected member of the University's Council and the Chair of the British International Studies Association (BISA). She was a member of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) sub-panel for Politics and International Studies. She is an editor of the Review of International Political Economy, and until 2013 she was one of the editors of the journal New Political Economy, serving as its Editor-in-Chief between 2004 and 2010. She is a member of the editorial and advisory boards of several journals and book series, including Review of International Studies, International Affairs, and the Cambridge Studies in International Relations book series. She received the award of Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) in 2016.

Professor Phillips’ research and teaching interests cluster around the study of global political economy, global economic governance, and the political economy of development.

My current research is organised around three linked areas of interest:

Global economic governance. This strand of research is interested in the changing forms and dynamics of governance in the global economy, particularly in connection with the evolution of global value chains as the principal structures around which production and trade are organised. It connects to interests in labour and labour standards in global production, the politics of public and private forms of governance, and the ‘ethics’ of production. This work involves both individual and co-authored research projects, alongside collaboration with a network of partners in the US, UK and other parts of the world.

The governance of international migration. This research involves collaboration with Professor Andrew Geddes and others on his five-year European Research Council Advanced Grant on ‘Prospects for International Migration Governance’. The project explores how actors’ understandings of migration shape the governance of migration at state, regional and international levels. Find out more about the project.

Unfree labour and human trafficking in the global economy. This ongoing work focuses on the global phenomena of forced labour and trafficking for labour exploitation, exploring how and why these forms of exploitation emerge and the reasons for their resilience. It was supported recently by the award of a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, a research grant from the Chronic Poverty Research Centre and a research seminars grant from the Economic and Social Research Council.

Key Projects

Interacting with undergraduate and postgraduate students, in lectures and seminars and outside the ‘formal’ teaching environment, is one of the most stimulating and enjoyable parts of the job of being an academic. I have always thought that teaching is not about (or should not be about) trying to ‘sell’ a particular viewpoint or approach to students, but rather about helping to develop their capacity for independent, critical thought that is strongly grounded in detailed empirical knowledge and careful theoretical work. This is reflected in the ways I approach all of my teaching and supervision activities, whether in large lectures, in seminars, in one-to-one discussions during office hours, or in dissertation or thesis supervision meetings. I try always to find new ways to pique students’ interest and excitement about the subject matter of my courses, to stimulate and challenge them to think their way around the topics and systematically question their own assumptions and arguments, and to encourage everyone to be confident in participating in group discussions and debates. Yet the relationship is not one-way, and I place a great deal of importance both on students coming to lectures and seminars well-prepared and ready to engage in the process of learning and debating, and on encouraging independent work and the development of research skills. When the two sides of the process come together, the results can be enormously enjoyable and highly rewarding.

As I am currently the Head of Department, I am not at present contributing to undergraduate or postgraduate teaching, but am supervising a number of PhD students.

Nicola Phillips enthusiastically welcomes applications from prospective doctoral students interested in pursuing research in her areas of interest. She has previously supervised fifteen students who have successfully completed their PhDs.

View full list of publications

Indicative Publications

Examples of Recent Invited Papers and Keynote Lectures