About

Alyssa Maraj Grahame is a political economist who focuses on the politics of finance, crises and disasters, and theoretical traditions in political economy. She is currently working on two projects. Her first book-length project, Financial Independence: Internal Colonies and the Politics of Financialization, investigates the rise and fall of financial centers among “internal colonies”–countries that are either current or former dependencies of larger European powers–on the semi-periphery of the European Union/European Economic Area. Her second project, The Politics of Financial Freedom, explores the everyday political economy of the prosperity gospel in the United States; its connection to household financial practices, direct selling, childcare, and rural economies; and how interactions among these reveal the surprisingly large-scale, global consequences of the deep-seated American quest for financial freedom. Her most recent work appears in Qualitative and Multi-Methods Research (2020).

Originally from Canada, Grahame is also of Trinidadian descent. She received her Honours Bachelor of Arts in political science and anthropology from the University of Toronto and her PhD in political science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She held a Fulbright in Iceland in 2014-2015 and is a fellow of the Leifur Eiríksson Foundation. At Bates, she teaches courses that address various dimensions of political economy, including money and power, states of emergency, and the history of political economic thought. Given her regional expertise, many of her courses are cross-listed with the European Studies program. Her approaches to research and teaching highlight the importance of context and lived experience to the study of political economy. 

Fall 2020 courses: States and Markets; Economic Liberalism and its Critics

Winter 2021 courses: International Political Economy; Money and Power; the European Union