Post-Covid Digital Finance

Digital space has been a key area of innovation for finance over the last decade. From novel forms of financial technologies (FinTech) and consumer interfaces to the use and monetarisation of digital data, the expansion of algorithmic life, the growth of technology companies as powerful financial actors, the promotion of cashlessness and new kinds of everyday digital practices and lifestyles, digital finance has become a diverse and nuanced terrain.
 
We are interested in exploring the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has been folded into different practices of digital finance, reshaping and redefining its boundaries and intersections. The event will feature conversations with two experts working with digital finance and its temporalities, geographies and social ties, namely Karen Lai, Associate Professor of the Department of Geography at the Durham University and Jonathan Turner, Technology Strategy and Innovations Lead at Fair4All.
 
The discussion will be chaired by IGP Associate Professor, Christopher Harker. Each session will consist of 30-minutes interview followed by a Q&A session with the audience, including scholars and practitioners working on topics relevant to digital finance. The event will be held via Zoom and recorded for subsequent dissemination as a podcast.

Session 1 – The political economy of new financial technologies

Karen Lai is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Durham University. Her research interests include geographies of money and finance, FinTech, service sectors and market formation, focusing particularly on issues of financialization, knowledge networks, and financial centre development. Her current research examines the impacts of FinTech on reshaping socio-economic practices, infrastructures and actors in global financial networks, and reconfiguring financial centre development. She is a founding member of the Global Network on Financial Geography (FinGeo) and serves on the journal editorial board/international advisory board of Geoforum, Geography Compass (Economic section), and the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography.

Session 2 – The everyday life of digital finance

Jonathan Turner has almost 30 years of financial services technology experience, primarily consulting with mainstream financial services organisations. He currently leads on Technology for Fair4All Finance, a non-profit company founded to support the financial wellbeing of people in vulnerable circumstances with an ambition to increase access to fair, affordable and appropriate financial products and services. In his role, Jonathan is responsible for aligning technology services and innovations with those organisations serving people in vulnerable circumstances. Prior to Fair4All Finance Jonathan was a partner at PwC, leading on FS technology consulting and CIO advisory. He was the technology lead and COO on the Lehman Brothers administration. Jonathan also advises the RNLI and volunteers for a local STEM educational charity, SATRO.