Dr Ilias Alami
- Director of PhD Programme
- Assistant Professor in the Political Economy of Development
- University Teaching Officer
Contact
About
Dr Ilias Alami is University Assistant Professor in the Political Economy of Development in the Centre of Development Studies and in the Department of Politics and International Studies. He is also the Director of the PhD programme in Development Studies.
Prior to joining Cambridge, he held research and teaching positions at Uppsala University, Maastricht University, and Manchester University. He also held visiting positions at the University of Sydney, Sciences Po Paris, the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, and the University of Johannesburg.
Ilias is a fellow of the Transition Security Project, a member of the Second Cold War Observatory, a member of Common Wealth's Green Planning Commission, and an editor of the journal Economy and Society. He’s authored 2 books, more than 50 academic articles and book chapters, and dozens of op-eds and magazine articles.
His work has featured in, or was discussed in, the Financial Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg, El País, Mediapart, Phenomenal World, Project Syndicate, and other news outlets.
Research
Ilias writes about state capitalism, geopolitics, global development, the green transition, global finance, and racial capitalism.
Books
- The Spectre of State Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 2024 (co-authored with Prof Adam Dixon)
This book won the BISA-IPEG best 2025 book in International Political Economy award, and it received an Honourable Mention for the ISA-Global Development Section 2025 book award.
- Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets, Routledge, 2019
This book was shortlisted for the BISA-IPEG best 2025 book in International Political Economy award.
Other key publications
- Alami, I., Baghat, A. Guermond, V. (2026). Towards an International Political Economy of Raced Finance, Review of International Political Economy.
- Alami, I., Jack Taggart, and Tom Chodor, (2025) Rebuilding the Ladder? Contemporary Contests Over Industrial Policy. Global Policy. Online first.
- Schindler, S., Alami, I., DiCarlo, J., Jepson, N., Rolf, S., Bayırbağ, M. K., ... & Zhao, Y. (2024). The Second Cold War: US-China competition for centrality in infrastructure, digital, production, and finance networks. Geopolitics, 29(4), 1083-1120.
- Alami, I., Copley, J., & Moraitis, A. (2024). The ‘wicked trinity’ of late capitalism: Governing in an era of stagnation, surplus humanity, and environmental breakdown. Geoforum, 153, 103691.
- Alami, I., Alves, C., Bonizzi, B., Kaltenbrunner, A., Koddenbrock, K., Kvangraven, I., & Powell, J. (2023). International Financial Subordination: a critical research agenda, Review of International Political Economy, 30(4), (2023), 1360-1386.
Teaching and supervision
Ilias is interested in supervising PhD students whose work touches on one or several of the themes listed in his research interests.
Ilias teaches on the MPhil in Development Studies. He convenes a paper on the political economy of money and finance in development and co-teaches the co-paper on Intellectual Traditions in Development Studies.
Ilias won the 2025 Aaron Rapport Teaching Prize for excellence in teaching, awarded by the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at Cambridge based on student feedback to the individual who has best informed students’ education in politics and international studies over this past year.