Karen P Y Lai
Biographic Data
| ID | 1474786 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen P Y Lai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen P Y |
| FAMILY NAME | Lai |
| SIGNATURE | LAI K P Y |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Economic Geography for the Next Century
In this editorial we follow on from Murphy’s “Looking Back: Economic Geography’s Evolution, 1925–1991” (Murphy Citation2026), a critical and reflective history of EG, to reflect upon where matters are presently, and on future directions that we see as most relevant, urgent, and exciting
Financial geography III – Everyday lives of finance
This third progress report on financial geography focuses on the everyday lives of finance. Moving beyond firm- and state-centric analyses, research increasingly foregrounds how financialisation permeates households, care relations and daily practices through variegated financial subjectivities, debt-based survival strategies and digital intermediation. Drawing on feminist political economy and critical approaches, the report highlights intersect…
Geographies of Responsibility, Care and Repair in Digital Worlds of AI: Introduction to the Themed Intervention
The presence of AI in everyday life has dramatically increased and intensified in the last few years. From playing a role in teaching and research activities within educational institutions, to becoming a ubiquitous feature in search engines and in all manner of apps, AI is now omnipresent. While geographers have long examined the role of AI in various ways, in this Themed Intervention we highlight often overlooked dimensions of responsibility, c…
Atlas of finance: Seeing and communicating the (financial) world differently
World cities under conditions of digitization and platform capitalism: Updating the advanced producer services complex
This themed issue showcases contributions that study how processes of digitization and platformization are reshaping the intermediary role and operations of advanced producer services (APS). It places these alterations against the backdrop of earlier rounds of APS ‘shapeshifting’ amid globalization and financialization. This introduction to the themed issue outlines the main dimensions of these shifts affecting APS: geographical changes, sectoral…
State action and inaction in the shaping of value and wealth entanglements: The role of Singapore in the global 'gold chain
Value and wealth creation, capture and protection are important features of contemporary global capitalism. However, global value chains and global wealth chains have been studied mostly in isolation from each other. In this article, we address this limitation by revealing the entanglements of value and wealth in the gold sector. We develop a typology of state action and inaction in value and wealth chains to explain how the state shapes the mobi…
Financial Geography
Financial geography is concerned with the roles of finance, money, and markets in the restructuring of contemporary capitalism, and how these changes have uneven impacts across space. Studies focus on the ways in which space and place are mobilized in shaping financial decisions, allocation of capital, regulatory frameworks of global financial markets, and development of onshore and offshore financial centers. An early political economy approach …
Financial Geography
Financial geography is concerned with the roles of finance, money, and markets in the restructuring of contemporary capitalism, and how these changes have uneven impacts across space. Studies focus on the ways in which space and place are mobilized in shaping financial decisions, allocation of capital, regulatory frameworks of global financial markets, and development of onshore and offshore financial centers. An early political economy approach …
Financial advisors, financial ecologies and the variegated financialisation of everyday investors
While recent work on financialisation of everyday life has elucidated the reshaping of everyday consumers as risk‐taking investors, the role of financial advisors ( FA s) has been overlooked, even though they are key intermediaries in articulating households and individuals into circuits of global finance. Through a financial ecologies approach, this paper focuses on FA s to reveal the ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in their professiona…
Neighbours First, Bankers Second”: Mobilising financial citizenship in Singapore
The Lehman Minibonds crisis and financialisation of investor subjects in Singapore
Using the case of the L ehman M inibonds crisis in S ingapore, this paper aims to elucidate processes of financialisation and geographies of investor subjects by investigating the reshaping of retail banking consumers into investor subjects. Instead of painting all investor subjects with a broad brush as part of a generic financialisation process, the Minibonds crisis demonstrates how the consumption of financial products is geographically specif…
New Spatial Logics in Global Cities Research: Networks, Flows and New Political Spaces
While world cities or global cities research has become an established interdisciplinary field over a few short decades, criticisms have been levelled at its narrow focus on selected leading cities and specific economic activities of corporate headquarters, finance and advanced producer services. This article identifies four recent strands of research from geographers and urban scholars seeking more nuanced and critical approaches to processes of…
Imagineering’ Asian emerging markets: Financial knowledge networks in the fund management industry
Contesting the State: Discourses of the Asian Economic Crisis and Mediating Strategies of Electronics Firms in Singapore
In the last decade or so, human geographers have paid greater attention to the significance of discourses. We acknowledge the importance of discursive constructions and metaphorical representations of economic space, and extend the argument by examining the practices that may follow from such discourses. With use of empirical data from a firm-level survey and interviews with representatives of electronics firms in Singapore, we focus on contested…
Financial advisors, financial ecologies and the variegated financialisation of everyday investors
While recent work on financialisation of everyday life has elucidated the reshaping of everyday consumers as risk‐taking investors, the role of financial advisors ( FA s) has been overlooked, even though they are key intermediaries in articulating households and individuals into circuits of global finance. Through a financial ecologies approach, this paper focuses on FA s to reveal the ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in their professiona…
Imagineering’ Asian emerging markets: Financial knowledge networks in the fund management industry
Neighbours First, Bankers Second”: Mobilising financial citizenship in Singapore
New Spatial Logics in Global Cities Research: Networks, Flows and New Political Spaces
While world cities or global cities research has become an established interdisciplinary field over a few short decades, criticisms have been levelled at its narrow focus on selected leading cities and specific economic activities of corporate headquarters, finance and advanced producer services. This article identifies four recent strands of research from geographers and urban scholars seeking more nuanced and critical approaches to processes of…
World cities under conditions of digitization and platform capitalism: Updating the advanced producer services complex
This themed issue showcases contributions that study how processes of digitization and platformization are reshaping the intermediary role and operations of advanced producer services (APS). It places these alterations against the backdrop of earlier rounds of APS ‘shapeshifting’ amid globalization and financialization. This introduction to the themed issue outlines the main dimensions of these shifts affecting APS: geographical changes, sectoral…
The Lehman Minibonds crisis and financialisation of investor subjects in Singapore
Using the case of the L ehman M inibonds crisis in S ingapore, this paper aims to elucidate processes of financialisation and geographies of investor subjects by investigating the reshaping of retail banking consumers into investor subjects. Instead of painting all investor subjects with a broad brush as part of a generic financialisation process, the Minibonds crisis demonstrates how the consumption of financial products is geographically specif…
Geographies of Responsibility, Care and Repair in Digital Worlds of AI: Introduction to the Themed Intervention
The presence of AI in everyday life has dramatically increased and intensified in the last few years. From playing a role in teaching and research activities within educational institutions, to becoming a ubiquitous feature in search engines and in all manner of apps, AI is now omnipresent. While geographers have long examined the role of AI in various ways, in this Themed Intervention we highlight often overlooked dimensions of responsibility, c…
Economic Geography for the Next Century
In this editorial we follow on from Murphy’s “Looking Back: Economic Geography’s Evolution, 1925–1991” (Murphy Citation2026), a critical and reflective history of EG, to reflect upon where matters are presently, and on future directions that we see as most relevant, urgent, and exciting
State action and inaction in the shaping of value and wealth entanglements: The role of Singapore in the global 'gold chain
Value and wealth creation, capture and protection are important features of contemporary global capitalism. However, global value chains and global wealth chains have been studied mostly in isolation from each other. In this article, we address this limitation by revealing the entanglements of value and wealth in the gold sector. We develop a typology of state action and inaction in value and wealth chains to explain how the state shapes the mobi…
Contesting the State: Discourses of the Asian Economic Crisis and Mediating Strategies of Electronics Firms in Singapore
In the last decade or so, human geographers have paid greater attention to the significance of discourses. We acknowledge the importance of discursive constructions and metaphorical representations of economic space, and extend the argument by examining the practices that may follow from such discourses. With use of empirical data from a firm-level survey and interviews with representatives of electronics firms in Singapore, we focus on contested…
Contesting the State: Discourses of the Asian Economic Crisis and Mediating Strategies of Electronics Firms in Singapore
In the last decade or so, human geographers have paid greater attention to the significance of discourses. We acknowledge the importance of discursive constructions and metaphorical representations of economic space, and extend the argument by examining the practices that may follow from such discourses. With use of empirical data from a firm-level survey and interviews with representatives of electronics firms in Singapore, we focus on contested…
Imagineering’ Asian emerging markets: Financial knowledge networks in the fund management industry
New Spatial Logics in Global Cities Research: Networks, Flows and New Political Spaces
While world cities or global cities research has become an established interdisciplinary field over a few short decades, criticisms have been levelled at its narrow focus on selected leading cities and specific economic activities of corporate headquarters, finance and advanced producer services. This article identifies four recent strands of research from geographers and urban scholars seeking more nuanced and critical approaches to processes of…
The Lehman Minibonds crisis and financialisation of investor subjects in Singapore
Using the case of the L ehman M inibonds crisis in S ingapore, this paper aims to elucidate processes of financialisation and geographies of investor subjects by investigating the reshaping of retail banking consumers into investor subjects. Instead of painting all investor subjects with a broad brush as part of a generic financialisation process, the Minibonds crisis demonstrates how the consumption of financial products is geographically specif…
Financial advisors, financial ecologies and the variegated financialisation of everyday investors
While recent work on financialisation of everyday life has elucidated the reshaping of everyday consumers as risk‐taking investors, the role of financial advisors ( FA s) has been overlooked, even though they are key intermediaries in articulating households and individuals into circuits of global finance. Through a financial ecologies approach, this paper focuses on FA s to reveal the ambiguities and inconsistencies inherent in their professiona…
Neighbours First, Bankers Second”: Mobilising financial citizenship in Singapore
Financial Geography
Financial geography is concerned with the roles of finance, money, and markets in the restructuring of contemporary capitalism, and how these changes have uneven impacts across space. Studies focus on the ways in which space and place are mobilized in shaping financial decisions, allocation of capital, regulatory frameworks of global financial markets, and development of onshore and offshore financial centers. An early political economy approach …
Financial Geography
Financial geography is concerned with the roles of finance, money, and markets in the restructuring of contemporary capitalism, and how these changes have uneven impacts across space. Studies focus on the ways in which space and place are mobilized in shaping financial decisions, allocation of capital, regulatory frameworks of global financial markets, and development of onshore and offshore financial centers. An early political economy approach …
World cities under conditions of digitization and platform capitalism: Updating the advanced producer services complex
This themed issue showcases contributions that study how processes of digitization and platformization are reshaping the intermediary role and operations of advanced producer services (APS). It places these alterations against the backdrop of earlier rounds of APS ‘shapeshifting’ amid globalization and financialization. This introduction to the themed issue outlines the main dimensions of these shifts affecting APS: geographical changes, sectoral…
State action and inaction in the shaping of value and wealth entanglements: The role of Singapore in the global 'gold chain
Value and wealth creation, capture and protection are important features of contemporary global capitalism. However, global value chains and global wealth chains have been studied mostly in isolation from each other. In this article, we address this limitation by revealing the entanglements of value and wealth in the gold sector. We develop a typology of state action and inaction in value and wealth chains to explain how the state shapes the mobi…
Geographies of Responsibility, Care and Repair in Digital Worlds of AI: Introduction to the Themed Intervention
The presence of AI in everyday life has dramatically increased and intensified in the last few years. From playing a role in teaching and research activities within educational institutions, to becoming a ubiquitous feature in search engines and in all manner of apps, AI is now omnipresent. While geographers have long examined the role of AI in various ways, in this Themed Intervention we highlight often overlooked dimensions of responsibility, c…
Atlas of finance: Seeing and communicating the (financial) world differently
Economic Geography for the Next Century
In this editorial we follow on from Murphy’s “Looking Back: Economic Geography’s Evolution, 1925–1991” (Murphy Citation2026), a critical and reflective history of EG, to reflect upon where matters are presently, and on future directions that we see as most relevant, urgent, and exciting
Financial geography III – Everyday lives of finance
This third progress report on financial geography focuses on the everyday lives of finance. Moving beyond firm- and state-centric analyses, research increasingly foregrounds how financialisation permeates households, care relations and daily practices through variegated financial subjectivities, debt-based survival strategies and digital intermediation. Drawing on feminist political economy and critical approaches, the report highlights intersect…
Economics (10 works) · Finance (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Business (7 works) · Finance (6 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Economic geography (4 works) · Financial market (4 works)