Dr Iacopo Mugnai

He is currently part of ‘Banking on Europe’, a three-year project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Luxembourg National Research Fund, on how the EU came to borrow €750 billion to invest in Europe’s digital and green transition after COVID-19. The Principal Investigators of this project are Prof Dermot Hodson (Loughborough University London) and Prof David Howarth (University of Luxembourg).

Prior to joining Loughborough University London, Iacopo was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Birkbeck College. He holds a PhD from the University of Warwick, an MSc in International Political Economy from the LSE, an MA in Public Policy from the University of Bologna, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Bologna. His doctoral dissertation investigated the politics of ideas within the ECB by analysing the drivers and dynamics of change in the economic thinking of the Bank on fiscal policy and structural reforms. His research has been published in Comparative European Politics.

Iacopo’s research focusses on the role played by supranational technocratic institutions within the politics of European integration and capitalist restructuring. He is particularly interested in the ways in which economic ideas are used strategically by the ECB to legitimise a particular (yet shifting) social construction of Europe as an economic space.

Iacopo has taught in political economy at the University of Warwick, while his research has been awarded several grants including an ESRC award and a PAIS PhD Studentship from the University of Warwick. In 2017 he was a Visiting Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.