Workshop on Sustainable Investment and the Politics of Materiality
We invite expressions of interest to participate in a workshop on 青瓜视频楽ustainable Investment and the Politics of Materiality青瓜视频�, to be held at the University of Manchester on 16-17 September 2025.
We invite expressions of interest (EoIs) in participating in a workshop on 青瓜视频楽ustainable Investment and the politics of materiality青瓜视频�, which will be held in Manchester on 16 and 17 September 2025, with funding from The University of Manchester青瓜视频檚 Sustainable Consumption Institute.
The workshop青瓜视频檚 goal is to stimulate conversations among researchers both about how the material concerns of sustainability politics are incorporated into financial decision-making and about what happens when sustainable finance practices themselves become objects of political contestation.
One of the workshop青瓜视频檚 aims is to develop new networks of researchers and explore possibilities for future research activities related to this theme. This event will therefore focus more on identifying interesting questions and opportunities for future research than on presenting existing research outputs, in the hopes that this will be generative both for our own work and for potential collaborations among participants.
With this in mind we are inviting potential participants to submit short EoIs (roughly 1-2 pages in length) explaining how their work relates to the workshop theme, which current developments in this area they are most interested in exploring, and what possible directions for future research they are interested in pursuing, instead of a conventional conference paper abstract. You will find a longer description of the rationale for this event (and information about how to submit an expression of interest in participating) below.
Workshop Rationale
For at least two decades, sustainable investment professionals have sought to mediate financial actors青瓜视频� relationships with the material concerns of sustainability politics (from climate change to socio-economic inequality) and to incorporate these concerns into financial rationalities, practices and decision-making. For instance, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investors (and adjacent social movements) have employed increasingly elaborate quantification and justification devices to demonstrate that environmental and social concerns can affect investment returns and thus transform sustainability issues into 青瓜视频榝inancially material青瓜视频� risks which institutional investors must take into account (see Christophers 2019, Brice et al 2022).
Meanwhile, impact investors have sought to transform the pursuit of sustainable development into a means of financial accumulation by developing impact metrics and indicators which display their investments青瓜视频� capacity to make not only a profit but also a significant difference to environmental sustainability and/or social wellbeing (Barman 2015, Eyre et al 2024, Kabouche et al 2025).
Critical scholarship often highlights the ways in which such attempts to 青瓜视频榤ake sustainability matter青瓜视频� within financial institutions and practices oblige sustainability initiatives and practitioners to reshape their objectives and activities in ways which financialise sustainability through subordinating environmental and social concerns to financial motives and logics (Hiss 2013).
Existing research therefore often depicts sustainable investment as a broadly antipolitical (Bracking 2014) or post-political (Parfitt 2025) endeavour which frequently serves to displace the negotiation of sustainability issues from the sphere of political dissensus to that of financial calculation (Brice et al 2022). However, relationships between politics, finance and sustainability are currently shifting rapidly as the pursuit of sustainable development within financial institutions, practices and portfolios itself becomes a prominent object of political concern and contestation (Braun 2022).
Recent claims by politicians and regulatory officials in the USA that ESG investment practices have contaminated financial markets with a radical 青瓜视频榩olitical青瓜视频� or 青瓜视频榠deological青瓜视频� agenda have challenged mainstream sustainable finance practitioners青瓜视频� claims that their investment decisions are guided by financial materiality rather than ethico-political convictions. These denunciations (and associated threats of divestment and/or regulatory intervention by sympathetic government agencies) appear to be provoking many North American financial institutions to eliminate sustainable investment products and practices, and to be driving a reduction in ambition among some multi-stakeholder sustainable finance initiatives (e.g. the Net Zero Banking and Asset Managers青瓜视频� alliances).
Yet financial actors elsewhere simultaneously face political pressure to maintain or expand their sustainable investment commitments. Notably, European governments 青瓜视频� responding to social movements青瓜视频� complaints that existing sustainable investment initiatives often lack tangible environmental or social impact 青瓜视频� have sought to compel financial institutions to align their investment practices with policy goals by reporting and considering double materiality (that is, the environmental and social impacts caused by their assets and portfolios).
These divergent political contestations may be beginning to fashion an emerging 青瓜视频榞eopolitics青瓜视频� of sustainable investment, in which some asset owners reshore their capital to ensure that it is invested and managed in ways which align with domestic political expectations and regulatory requirements.
These ongoing upheavals highlight the limitations of existing analyses of the financialisation of sustainability and challenge researchers to develop new approaches to the relationship between sustainability politics and financial risk. In response, this workshop aims to foster conversations and relationships between researchers examining how issues of environmental sustainability and social equity are internalised into financial calculation and those exploring how financial practices become objects of political contestation. Our intent in organising this event is partly to explore how the devices and regimes of justification used by sustainable investment practitioners to make sustainability issues matter within financial logics and practices become objects of political contestation and to consider how engaging with this 青瓜视频榩olitics of materiality青瓜视频� might challenge scholars to rethink their ostensibly antipolitical effects.
However, we are also interested in broadening such analyses to think through how the decisions and activities of financial actors might be changing in response to the pressures, uncertainties and financial risks 青瓜视频� from reputational damage and regulatory enforcement to divestment 青瓜视频� engendered by this politicisation of financial activities and rationalities (what might be called the materiality of sustainability politics). In so doing, we seek to begin developing concepts, research questions and avenues of enquiry which might be employed to grasp both how the institutions and activities of sustainable finance give form to contemporary political economies and ecologies 青瓜视频� and how they are themselves constituted by political processes which overflow the internal logics of financial activity.
We are conscious that many of the processes in which this workshop is interested are newly emerging and/or rapidly developing, and that potential participants may not yet have had the time or opportunity to subject them to sustained empirical enquiry. This, along with our desire for the workshop to operate as a creative site of interaction to generate new ideas rather than simply an opportunity to present existing work, means that we are not seeking abstracts for paper presentations based on past research.
Instead, we would like to invite potential attendees to submit short (roughly 1-2-page) expressions of interest in attending the workshop which we hope will help to stimulate and shape discussions among participants during the event. Expressions of interest should respond to the following questions:
- How do you think about relationships between politics, finance and sustainability and in what ways does your (current, past and/or future) work address these relationships?
- Which of the current upheavals in these relationships do you find most important, significant or thought-provoking (and why)?
- What new research questions, theoretical possibilities and/or avenues of empirical enquiry do these changes open up?
We have access to some funding from UoM青瓜视频檚 Sustainable Consumption Institute to support participation in the workshop. We will prioritise the use of those funds partly in relation to the strength of applicants青瓜视频� connection to the workshop theme, but also to promote the participation of scholars from the global South, early career researchers, and from groups traditionally marginalised within universities.
Please send these along with a CV to jeremy.brice@manchester.ac.uk, copying in aarti.krishnan-2@manchester.ac.uk and Ben.Eyre@uea.ac.uk, by Wednesay, 25 June 2025. We will follow up by the end of June to advise potential participants of the outcome of the selection process and to provide further details regarding participation in the workshop.
References
Barman, E. (2015) Of Principle and Principal: Value Plurality in the Market of Impact Investing. Valuation Studies 3(1), p.9青瓜视频�44.
Bracking, S. (2014) The Anti-Politics of Climate Finance: The Creation and Performativity of the Green Climate Fund. Antipode 47(2), p.281-302.
Braun, B. (2022) Exit, Control, and Politics: Structural Power and Corporate Governance under Asset Manager Capitalism. Politics & Society 50(4), p.630-654.
Brice, J., Cusworth, G., Lorimer, J. and Garnett, T. (2022) Immaterial Animals and Financialized Forests: Asset Manager Capitalism, ESG Integration and the Politics of Livestock. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 54, (8), p.1551青瓜视频�68.
Christophers, B. (2019) Environmental Beta or How Institutional Investors Think about Climate Change and Fossil Fuel Risk. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 109(3), p.754青瓜视频�74.
Eyre, B., Bonilla, O., Brightman, M. and Voicu, S. (2024) BEYOND THE 青瓜视频楾YRANNY OF METRICS青瓜视频�? INDICATOR LITERACY IN SUSTAINABLE FINANCE. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 115(5), p.582-597.
Hiss, S. (2013) The Politics of the Financialization of Sustainability. Competition and Change 17(3), p.234-247.
Kabouche, N., Balsiger, P. and Golka, P. (2025) Issue translation and issue valorization: The role of professionals in the assetization of social and environmental impact. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, available at: