Rate My Professor Lena Rethel

Lena Rethel is Professor of International Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. Her research interests center on the international politics of finance and development, the global governance of Islamic economies encompassing finance, food, and related sectors, and the disciplinary parameters and spatial locations of contemporary International Political Economy. She explores the theories and common senses that underpin economic and financial policymaking, institutional changes such as the expansion of capital markets and the development of Islamic finance, and the socio-economic implications of these transformations. Rethel draws key insights from the Southeast Asia region, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia, including examinations of how middle-class expectations influence financial policy and politics in emerging market democracies.

In her career at the University of Warwick, Rethel has held positions including Lecturer from 2010 to 2011, Assistant Professor from 2011 to 2014, Associate Professor from 2014 to 2021, and Professor thereafter. She directed the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation from 2019 to 2024 and served as Lead Editor of the Review of International Political Economy from 2020 to 2022. Currently, she is Principal Investigator of the FINDEM project, funded by a UKRI Frontier Research grant under the UKRI ERC guarantee scheme, running from August 2024 to July 2029. Rethel has been a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in 2017-2018 and a Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University in 2016-2017. Her major publications include the co-authored I-PEEL: The International Political Economy of Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2022) with James Brassett, Juanita Elias, and Ben Richardson; the monograph The Political Economy of Financial Development in Malaysia (Routledge, 2021); and the co-edited The Everyday Political Economy of Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Highly cited works feature 'Whose legitimacy? Islamic finance and the global financial order' (2011, 191 citations), 'Financialisation and the Malaysian political economy' (2010, 124 citations), and 'Conflicts of interest in financial intermediation' (2008, 92 citations). With over 1,411 citations on Google Scholar, her contributions shape understandings in global finance, Islamic economies, and Southeast Asian political economy.