In the fall of 2016, former AI Director Professor Ritu Birla took on the role of curating a new series of conversations at the Munk School:  the Initiative in Global Governance, Economy and Society.  A project which she designed in collaboration with Munk School Director Stephen Toope and Munk faculty, it elaborates the school’s agenda as a place to “figure out the future” by addressing states and markets outside traditional inter-state frameworks of global affairs. Motivated by a contemporary urgency to address rapidly changing global formations the initiative seeks to challenge established templates of analysis–strong state vs. free market, public vs. private, and traditional vs. modern.  The initiative presented a pair of panels showcasing Munk expertise on the topic of (In)securitization.  A video of the event can be found here:

https://hosting2.desire2learncapture.com/MUNK/1/Watch/1007.aspx

In the spring of 2017, Professor Birla held a Chancellor Jackman Six-Month Faculty Research Fellowship for her project on Neoliberalism and Empire.   This project is directed at a major monograph solicited by Duke University Press that will merge three strands of research that she has been developing in her writings over the past few years: the imperial history of neoliberal market society and processes of ‘economization’; cultures of finance and global financialization as central to the study of global governance and law; and ‘speculation’ as a potent trope for understanding contemporary capitalism and its practices of profit and survival.