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Staff Profile

Dr Jessa Loomis

Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography

Background

Background:

I am a feminist economic geographer interested in the everyday geographies of global finance. My research traces the often abstract and opaque workings of global finance and connects these processes with their everyday effects on the ground. Through this approach, my work reveals the social and spatial relations of financial dispossession and poses political questions about the ongoing financialization of the economy. This approach informs my Research and Teaching, detailed below.

I joined the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Economic Geography in 2020 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in 2024. Before joining Newcastle, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban and Economic Geography at Clark University (2018-2020). I earned my doctorate from the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky (2018) and hold graduate certificates in Social Theory and Gender and Women's Studies.

I currently serve as an Associate Editor of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and as the Treasurer of the Economic Geography Research Group (EGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (2024-2027). I also coordinate the Economic Geographies Research Cluster at Newcastle University.

Research

The Democratisation of Finance and Expanding Access to Credit

I have a longstanding interest in efforts to expand access to financial knowledge and promote financial inclusion in the United States. My research in this area examined the rise of non-profit financial coaching programs in Boston, MA and showed how these programs encourage participants to pay down their debt, monitor their credit scores, avoid predatory lending services, and save and invest using mainstream financial products. This research (see: Geoforum 2018; Transactions 2022), contributes to scholarship in geography on financial inclusion and exclusion, the everyday life of finance, and economic subjectivity by showing how the financialization of the economy is achieved not only through the the actions of traditional financial actors and policies that structure the financial landscape, but also through efforts to shape the everyday financial practices of urban residents. The findings from this research call into question the motivations and terms of the so-called ‘democratisation of finance’ and suggests the need to more closely examine the conditions and material outcomes of the financial inclusion agenda in the United States.

Recently, my work has focused on the digital geographies of financial inclusion in order to better understand how digitalisation and platform logics may be changing relations of money and finance. Work in this vein includes writing with Daniel Cockayne (Waterloo, CAN) that analyses the rise of 'Buy Now, Pay Later' (BNPL) payment technologies and develops a feminist approach to fintech (Journal of Cultural Economy 2024). I've also written with Abigail Hardcastle (PhD candidate, Newcastle University) on cryptocurrency and the production of masculinity, and I am currently conducting new research on personal finance influencers (known as 'finfluencers') and the circulation of financial knowledge on social media.

Homebuying and the Intimate Geographies of Wealth Accumulation

My research project “Dear Seller: Homebuying and the Intimate Geographies of Wealth Accumulation” examines the role of Dear Seller letters in the contemporary relations of homebuying in the United States. Funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SRG21/211201; £9,474; December 2021-September 2023), this original research is the first systematic study of ‘Dear Seller’ letters, sometimes known as real estate 'love letters', and shows how different actors use and experience these letters in the homebuying process. This research offers an intimate geographical account of the often out-of-sight practices that shape residential real estate transactions.

Dis/Investments in Spaces of Care

Another strand of my work examines how spaces of care become sites of financial accumulation. In collaboration with Caitlin Henry (Manchester) I have examined private equity investment in urgent care centres and telehealth in the US, showing how this form of investment may be changing the provisioning of care (Geoforum 2023). By shining a light on the corporate and financial strategies that are typical of private equity investment, our work provides a feminist analysis of the strategies used to extract value from spaces of health/care.

I also co-edited a special issue in Environment and Planning A (2024) on the marketization of social reproduction. Bringing together nine geographically diverse and empirically rich papers, this special issue explores how systems of social reproduction are changed through the imposition of market and financial logics – and the permutations these logics take as they articulate with the more-than-economic work of reproducing life.

Visions for the Future of Economic Geography

I am also dedicated to the subdiscipline of Economic Geography and through my writing and service I contribute to envisioning and enacting a more inclusive and engaged knowledge community. Along with collaborators, I've written about the history and future of the subdiscipline of economic geography (EPA 2018; Progress in Human Geography 2020) and about a feminist approach to the economy in the Routledge International Handbook of Gender and Feminist Geographies (2020). Together, this writing considers the politics of knowledge production in the subdiscipline and calls for diversifying perspectives and broadening conversations within economic geography.

My efforts to build a more inclusive and engaged subdiscipline inform my service within and beyond my home institution. I currently serve as the Treasurer of the Economic Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society (2024-2027), and previously served as a student representative on the Economic Geography Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (2016). Along with collaborators, I created and co-organize the Women in Economic Geography Social Hour, providing a welcoming space for women and non-binary scholars of the economy to gather at the annual AAG conference (2017-2020) and RGS-IBG conference (2022-2024). I welcome conversation about my work in these roles and my broader efforts to build a vibrant subdiscipline.

Teaching

During the 2024-2025 academic year, I am contributing to the following modules:

  • GEO2099 Economic Geography (Module Leader)
  • GEO1026: Becoming a Geographer
  • GEO2140: Research Design and Planning for Human Geography
  • GEO2128: Emotional Geographies of the City: Vienna and Bratislava Field Course
  • GEO3099: Geography Undergraduate Dissertation
  • GEO8017: Human Geography Concepts in Action (MA program)

Prospective MA and PhD students:

Please contact me to discuss opportunities for postgraduate supervision. I am especially interested in working with students who are excited to pursue research in the areas of the everyday geographies of global finance, feminist economic geography, financialisation as a 'lived' process, financial in/exclusion, digital finance and fintech, and/or relations of housing and property.

Newcastle University is part of the ESRC-funded Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Programme (NINE DTP). I am happy to support funding applications for postgraduate study via this or other routes, but please contact me as soon as possible to discuss your academic interests and potential research project.

Postgraduate Supervision

Luke Green (PhD, expected 2024). The Financialising Univer[City]? A study of University Real Estate Investment in Edinburgh and Manchester, UK. Co-supervised with Andy Pike and Jane Pollard. ESRC funding.

Weile Zhang (PhD, expected 2028). The Gendered Dynamics of Alcohol Drinking Culture: Socio-spatial Implications Within and Beyond the Workplace in Hangzhou, China. Co-supervised with Rachel Pain and Emily Yarrow.

Abigail Hardcastle (MA, 2023). Decentralised and ‘De-Gendered’ Digital Finance: The Financial Subjectivities of Cryptocurrencies and the Production of Masculinity. ESRC funding.

Publications