Johnson Leigh, Dr.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Geography
University of Zurich - Irchel
Winterthurerstr. 190
CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland
room: | Y25L54 |
email: | |
tel: | +41-44-6355245 |
fax: | +41-44-6356848 |
Research interests
I am interested in configurations of investment, science, risk management, and development practice emerging in response to – and anticipation of – environmental change. In my dissertation, I pursued these questions in relation to the reinsurance industry's production and management of knowledge and the creation of new financial products to hedge North Atlantic tropical cyclone risks.
Theoretically, I am interested in how a political economy framework can be augmented with insights from poststructural political ecology and science and technology studies to understand the production of financial and environmental knowledge and the creation of "risk-bearing" subjects.
My current research investigates the dynamics of both "converging" and "emerging" markets in the (re)insurance industry, and how these play off of climate change concerns. In the realm of "convergence" between insurance and capital markets, I am analyzing the growth of catastrophe bonds as an alternative asset class, and the accompanying demand for a wide variety of catastrophe models to make natural hazard exposures commodifiabe and fungible. In the "emerging markets" of the Global South, I'm beginning research on the extension of microinsurance products to rural agricultural and pastoralist communities as a adaptation/development strategy.