Biography

Alexia Yates is a historian of economic life, focusing on urban history and the history of capitalism in modern Europe, particularly France. In her research and teaching, she pursues the challenge of how we might enliven critical political economy approaches to capitalism with a humanist agenda that accounts for the agency of the people, places, and things that embed and produce capitalism in particular historical conjunctures. Empirically, she has focused on two key domains: real estate and its impact on the urban experience, and finance, especially the cultural and social history of mass investment.

Fields of expertise