Academic Staff - T Heron
Dr. Tony Heron, BA, MA and PhD (Sheffield)
Senior Lecturer
Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 1695
Fax: +44 (0)114 222 1717
Room: 2.02 Elmfield
Feedback and Consultation hour (during term time): STUDY LEAVE SEMESTER 1 2011-12
Email: t.heron@sheffield.ac.uk
Profile
Tony Heron joined the Department as a temporary lecturer in 2002; he was appointed to a lectureship in 2004 and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2008. His main research interests relate to the theory and practice of international and comparative political economy, especially the politics of international trade and development.
Teaching
My teaching reflects a long-standing interest in issues of political economy, development politics and global economic governance. My approach to teaching is designed to encourage students to approach economic questions as political scientists: that is, asking who gets what, when and how in international economic relations. More specifically, we focus on the different ways in which political institutions – and the historical structures and power relations, ideas and economic interests that underpin them – shape distributive outcomes. My modules are based on a variety of different methods of teaching delivery, including both tutor- and student-centred approaches, e.g. lectures, oral presentations, group work, problem-based assignments, plenary debate and discussion. The key objective is to equip students with the conceptual and analytical skills to understand and critically evaluate both theoretical arguments and substantive policy debates. I also strive to make the actual content of my modules both relevant and interesting.
I am currently responsible for two modules at the MA level, both of which focus on the nature of global governance against the backdrop of a rapidly changing economic order:
POL 6550 United States Hegemony
This module explores the intellectual debate surrounding the Unites States’ global hegemony and, more particularly, the extent to which it has or has not experienced decline in the last few years. The module explores this question through a number of specific case studies - international trade, finance and development, energy security and climate change, the changing role of the dollar, the global financial crisis of 2008, the rise of the ‘BRIC’ economies and the reform of the Bretton Woods system – before turning to the recent emergence of the G20 and asking if this is a reflection of further US retrenchment or merely the latest institutional mechanism for projecting its continuing global hegemony.
This module also explores the question of global governance, but whereas POL 6550 focuses on the role of US hegemony therein this module is more concerned with the actual effectiveness of different modes of global governance and the collective action dynamics that underpin them. We examine the experience of the League of Nations and the United Nations up to the end of the Cold War, before turning to the contemporary ‘global governance debate’ via specific issue areas and policy regimes, including humanitarian assistance, economic governance, the environment, global health, migration and global security. We also consider other forms of governance including regional organisation like the EU, the growing role of private authority as well as the increasing significance of so-called ‘global’ civil society.
Recent Invited Papers and Key Note Lectures
I have presented papers at international conferences, workshops and public seminars in places as far flung as Australia, Jamaica, Canada, South Africa, Switzerland, Fiji, Iceland, the USA and the Netherlands.
Key Projects/Grants
Title of project: Promoting Trade-related Capacity Building in Small States: The Case of Post-Liberalisation Adjustment in Preference-dependent Economies
Awarding body: ESRC First Grant Scheme
Duration: September 2008-September 2011
Total award: Approximately £175,000
Professional activities and recognition
In 2009, I was a Research Fellow at the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI), University of the West Indies, Jamaica; I have also held visiting appointments at the Department of International Relations, Australian National University, School of Economics, University of the South Pacific, Fiji, and School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. I have examined PhD theses at the Universities of Birmingham, Manchester, Staffordshire, Warwick, School of African and Oriental Studies, University College London and University of the West Indies. I am a member of the ESRC peer review college, a co-director of the Political Economy Research Centre (PERC) and a member of the steering committee of the Sheffield International Development Network (SIDNET). I also co-edit the journal New Political Economy.
Current Research
My work straddles the disciplines of international and comparative political economy and development studies. I have a particular interest in North-South relations and the global politics of trade, production and development. My most recent research project funded by the ESRC investigates the politics of trade liberalisation and adjustment in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific. The central aim of this research is to examine the recent and dramatic effect of global trade liberalisation on the value of preferences that have historically provided access to OECD markets for a range of developing countries. Focusing on six cases - Jamaica, Belize, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mauritius and Fiji - the project traces the origins and distributive consequences of liberalisation and evaluates the effectiveness of various post-liberalisation adjustment policies promoted by bilateral and multilateral aid donors.
Other ongoing research includes:
- Small states and the global politics of trade preference erosion
- The rise and fall of the WTO’s ‘development’ agenda
- Competitiveness versus development: complimentary or contradictory drivers of the EU’s external trade strategy? (with Gabriel Siles-Brügge)
- The EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements and the promotion of regional economic integration (with Peg Murray-Evans)
Key Publications
- Pathways from Preferential Trade: The Politics of Liberalization and Adjustment in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (London: Palgrave, forthcoming)
- The Global Political Economy of Trade Protectionism and Liberalization: Trade Reform and Economic Adjustment in the Textiles and Clothing Industry (London: Routledge, 2012).
- ‘Competitive Liberalisation and the ‘Global Europe’ Services and Investment Agenda: Locating the Commercial Drivers of the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements’, with G. Siles-Brügge, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 50, No. 2, 2012.
- Asymmetrical Bargaining and Development Trade-offs in the CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement’, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 18, No. 3, 2011.
- ‘Path Dependency and the Politics of Liberalisation in Textiles and Clothing’, with B. J. Richardson, New Political Economy, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2008.
- ‘European Trade Diplomacy and the Politics of Global Development: Reflections on the EU-China “Bra-Wars” Dispute’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 42, No 2, 2007
- The New Political Economy of United States-Caribbean Relations: The Apparel Industry and the Politics of NAFTA Parity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
PhD Supervision
In the past I have supervised a number of students to completion on a variety of topics, including:
- The Political Economy of Japan’s Foreign Energy Dependence
- The World Trade Organisation and the Global Sugar Regime
- The Inter-American Development Bank and the Argentine Liberalisation Process of the 1990s
- The World Trade Organisation, Global Health Politics and the Pharmaceutical Industry
- The Globalisation of Capitalist Production and the North-South Divide
I am currently supervising seven PhD students - Perla Palanco (on the promotion of sustainable development business practice in Mexico’s energy sector) , Asa Cusak (on ALBA and post-neoliberal regionalism in Latin America), Gary Lowery (on ‘Aid for Trade’ and global economic governance), Su Arnall (on tourism as sustainable development strategy in the Caribbean), Peg Murray-Evans (on the EU’s promotion of regional integration in southern Africa), Gabriel Siles-Brügge (on ideas and interests in the making of the EU’s preferential trade strategy) and Mark Duncan (on global commodity chains and the politics of ‘sweatshops’ in US apparel).
I would welcome further PhD applications in most areas of international and comparative political economy, especially those relating to the global politics of trade, aid and development; the World Trade Organisation and global economic governance; globalisation and regionalisation; multilateralism, regionalism and bilateralism; the political economy of small states; the textiles and clothing industry; the EU's Economic Partnership Agreements and so on.