Dr. Jörg Wiegratz

Dr Jörg Wiegratz is a Lecturer in Political Economy of Global Development at the University of Leeds (UK), School of Politics and International Studies. Previously, he also taught at the Universities of Bath and Sheffield. He holds a PhD in Politics (Sheffield), a MA in International Political Economy (Warwick), and a MA in Economics (Cologne, Germany). Between 2004-2007, he worked as a researcher and consultant in Uganda (for the UN Industrial Development Organization, the Government of Uganda’s Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Industry and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation) and has been a Resource Person at Makerere University and a Visiting Scholar at the Economic Policy Research Centre, Kampala. To-date, his research has explored aspects of neoliberalism especially neoliberal moral economy and moral restructuring, market society, economic fraud, cultural political economy, everyday political economy, global value chains, industrial development, human resource development and African development, predominantly with an empirical focus on Uganda. In recent years, he has been particularly interested in studying processes related to the emergence and consolidation of neoliberal market societies in the various parts of the world, especially (but not only) in Africa. He researches neoliberalism as a cultural programme of restructuring norms, values, orientations, and practices with special emphasis on the dynamics of moral restructuring. HIs specific focus is on the changing moral economies of fraud, ‘malpractice’, market manipulation, power and poverty. He studies how aspects of political economy and moral economy are intertwined and interact and thus constitute political moral economies.