Staff Profile

I joined the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University in 2021 after having taught at the Universities of Sheffield and Nottingham. In addition to my principal research focus in the political economy of development in the global South, my work extensively engages with IR/IPE theory, historical sociology of state formation, and subaltern historiography.

I am the Director of the Postgraduate Taught Programmes in Politics and Degree Programme Director for the MA in Globalisation, Poverty and Development.

I am the co-founder of Political Economy Beyond Boundaries (with Dr Lisa Tilley) and served as the President of the European International Studies Association from 2021 to 2023.

Further information about my research, teaching and professional activities can be found on my personal website.

Current Research

My research is concerned broadly with the political economy of development in the global South. Specifically, I investigate how states and indigenous social forces produce, manage, and contest ‘development’ projects in the Middle East and North Africa. My earlier archival research on the historical sociology of capitalist development explored this puzzle by documenting how nation-state building projects were shaped not only by the expansion of the capitalist world market and ‘great power imperialism’, but also by the changing forms of domestic property and class relations in the fin de siècle Middle East.

Most recently, I completed a multi-year project on authoritarian neoliberalism in the Middle East, whereby I mapped out the ways in which economic liberalisation policies in Turkey and Egypt have strengthened authoritarian rule. I documented that the two states have increasingly relied on ‘executive centralisation’, and on coercive state apparatuses to marginalise popular mobilisations and socio-economic grievances produced by liberalisation policies.

I am currently investigating how state-led climate change 'mitigation' policies and critical infrastructure projects are contested by social movements in the Middle East and North Africa.

I am a member of the Environment and Sustainability Politics Research Group.

Click here for a full list of my publications.

PhD Supervision

I would be delighted to receive proposals from prospective doctoral researchers planning to work in the areas of:

• The political economy of development
• The political economy of urban governance
• Infrastructures and the politics of climate breakdown in the Middle East and North Africa
• Critical histories of capitalist development
• Historical materialist and postcolonial/decolonial approaches in IR/IPE

Please read my suggestions and guidelines for prospective PhD students before contacting me.

• POL2035 Power and Poverty in the Global Economy (UG Year 2).
• POL8043 Globalisation, Poverty and Development (MA).

If you are a current/former student and require a reference letter from me, please read my guidance first.

• Articles

  • Tansel CB, Tilley L. Reproducing socio-ecological life from below: Towards a planetary political economy of the global majority. Review of International Studies 2024, 50(3), 514-533.
  • Tansel CB. Historical Materialism and International Studies: Theorising the Politics of Struggle in the Everyday World. International Relations 2021, 35(1), 147-152.
  • Axster S, Danewid I, Wilcox L, Tansel CB, Goldstein A, Mahmoudi MS. Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State. International Political Sociology 2021, 15(3), 415–439.
  • Tansel CB. The Shape of 'Rising Powers' to Come? The Antinomies of Growth and Neoliberal Development in Turkey. New Political Economy 2020, 25(5), 791-812.
  • Tansel CB. Reproducing Authoritarian Neoliberalism in Turkey: Urban Governance and State Restructuring in the Shadow of Executive Centralization. Globalizations 2019, 16(3), 320-335.
  • Tansel CB. Neoliberalism and the Antagonisms of Authoritarian Resilience in the Middle East. South Atlantic Quarterly 2019, 118(2), 287-305.
  • Bruff I, Tansel CB. Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Trajectories of Knowledge Production and Praxis. Globalizations 2019, 16(3), 233-244.
  • Tansel CB. Passive Revolutions and the Dynamics of Social Change in the Peripheries. Review of African Political Economy 2018, 45(155), 115-124.
  • Tansel CB, De Smet B. Introduction: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Egypt. Review of African Political Economy 2018, 45(155), 85-90.
  • Tansel CB. Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Democratic Backsliding in Turkey: Beyond the Narratives of Progress. South European Society and Politics 2018, 23(2), 197-217.
  • Bieler A, Bozkurt S, Crook M, Cruttenden P, Erol E, Morton AD, Tansel CB, Uzgören E. The Enduring Relevance of Rosa Luxemburg's The Accumulation of Capital. Journal of International Relations and Development 2016, 19(3), 420-447.
  • Tansel CB. Geopolitics, Social Forces and the International: Revisiting the 'Eastern Question'. Review of International Studies 2016, 42(3), 492-512.
  • Tansel CB. The Politics of Contemporary Capitalism in Turkey (and the Politics of its Interlocutors). Development and Change 2015, 46(3), 570-584.
  • Tansel CB. Deafening Silence? Marxism, International Historical Sociology and the Spectre of Eurocentrism. European Journal of International Relations 2015, 21(1), 76-100.
  • Tansel CB. Breaking the Eurocentric Cage. Capital & Class 2013, 37(2), 299-307.

• Book Chapters

  • Tansel CB. Ties that Bind: Popular Uprisings and the Politics of Neoliberalism in the Middle East. In: Işıksal, H; Göksel, O, ed. Turkey’s Relations with the Middle East: Political Encounters after the Arab Spring. New York: Springer, 2018, pp.65-79.
  • Tansel CB. Batımerkezcilik Tartışmaları Işığında Marksizm ve Uluslararası Tarihsel Sosyoloji. In: Yalvaç, F, ed. Tarihsel Materyalizm ve Uluslararası İlişkiler: Temel Tartışmalar ve Kavramlar. Ankara: İmge, 2017, pp.309-331.
  • Tansel CB. Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Towards a New Research Agenda. In: Tansel, CB, ed. States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017, pp.1-28.

• Edited Books

  • Bruff I, Tansel CB, ed. Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Philosophies, Practices, Contestations. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.
  • Tansel CB, ed. States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017.