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 centers on the international politics of finance and development, the global governance of Islamic economies including finance, and the disciplinary parameters and spatial location of contemporary International Political Economy. Concentrating on Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia, she investigates the theories and common senses underpinning economic and financial policymaking, institutional changes such as the expansion of capital markets and development of Islamic finance, and their socio-economic implications. Rethel employs everyday and cultural political economy approaches alongside event ethnography in her analyses.

Rethel served as Director of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at Warwick from 2019 to 2024 and as Lead Editor of the Review of International Political Economy from 2020 to 2022. She is Principal Investigator of the FINDEM project, 'The Politics of Financial Citizenship,' funded by a UKRI Frontier Research grant through the UK guarantee scheme for successful ERC Consolidator Grant applications, spanning August 2024 to July 2029. This initiative explores how middle-class expectations influence financial policy and politics in emerging market democracies. Her authored and edited books include I-PEEL: The International Political Economy of Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2022, with James Brassett, Juanita Elias, and Ben Richardson), The Political Economy of Financial Development in Malaysia (Routledge, 2021), The Everyday Political Economy of Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016, edited with Juanita Elias), The Problem with Banks (Zed Books, 2012, with Timothy J. Sinclair), and Global Governance in Crisis (Routledge, 2015, edited with André Broome and Liam Clegg). Notable journal articles feature 'Whose legitimacy? Islamic finance and the global financial order' (Review of International Political Economy, 2011) and 'Financialisation and the Malaysian political economy' (Globalizations, 2010). Rethel has edited special issues on finance, development and the state in Asia (New Political Economy, 2020, with Elizabeth Thurbon) and the rise of Asia in international financial affairs (International Affairs, 2025, with Fabian Pape and Johannes Petry), contributing significantly to scholarship on financial governance, Islamic finance, and everyday political economy in emerging markets.