Emilia Roig
FELLOWSHIP TERM: 01/2024
Dr. Emilia Roig is a bestselling author and political scientist. She is dedicated to inspiring people to divest from systems of oppression and to shift collective consciousness. She has taught at universities in France, Germany, and the U.S. on intersectionality theory, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, queer feminism, and international and European law. Prior to her PhD, she worked extensively on human rights issues at the UN in Tanzania and Uganda, at the GIZ in Cambodia, and at Amnesty International in Germany - and then decided to leave the field of international development to focus on social justice in Europe. She founded the Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ) in 2017 and was Executive Director until 2024. She was jury member of the German Nonfiction Prize in 2020, was appointed Ashoka Fellow in 2019, and received the Edition F Award in 2021. She was elected "Most Influential Woman of the Year" in the Impact of Diversity Award in 2022.
Envisioning a world without financial markets and economic injustice
This research project explores the possibility of a money-free world and whether current developments point to an erosion of the global financial system. In our global capitalist system, power is irreducibly linked to economic and financial power, both of which determine access to political, cultural and symbolic power. The global climate, economic, social and political crises are intrinsically linked to a profound redefinition of concepts such as “value”, “worth”, “growth”, “wealth” and “poverty”. While the resolution of these crises will possibility entail the disintegration of our financial and monetary system, the end of oppression will inevitably imply a profound paradigmatic shift around the concept of power, including regarding the role, meaning and materiality of money. Current developments in the realm of financial markets and on the global political stage prefigure the erosion and disruption of our global economic system. Such a disruption could, in fact, lead to the end of the world as we know it. My research will explore the apocalyptic world that would emerge from such a transformation.