Profile picture for Matthew Soener

Contact Information

702 S Wright Street
3120 Lincoln Hall
Urbana, IL 61801
M/C 454
Phone: 217-300-6396
Assistant Professor

Biography

Prior to joining UIUC, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po in Paris. I received my Ph.D. in sociology from the Ohio State University in 2018 and received a BA from the University of Kansas. 

Research Interests

Economic Sociology; Environmental Sociology; Theory; Political Economy; Global and Transnational Sociology; Political Sociology

Research Description

My research combines classic themes from political economy, economic sociology, and inequality to understand contemporary socio-economic problems. I am broadly interested in the way global capitalism has transformed over the last half century. At the heart of this change is a major shift in the balance-of-power and material distribution. I follow these threads in three research tracks. First, I have studied "financialization" in relation to the restructuring of global production, corporate power, and state theory. Second, I have done research on inequality including between labor/capital across various projects as well as several focused on workplace wage gaps. Third, and more recently, I apply some of these themes to climate change. I am interested in forces driving in greenhouse gas emissions including exploitation, austerity, and stagnating growth. Going forward, I will explore the historical roots of some of these dynamics in a project on US state's economic and energy policies from the postwar period through the 1970s.

 

Courses Taught

Soc 200: Introduction to Social Theory

Soc 226: Political Sociology

Soc 500: Classical Social Theory

Soc 501: Contemporary Social Theory 

Soc 596: Political Economy

Soc 596: Political Sociology

Recent Publications

2025. "Secular Stagnation and Climate Change" -- Review of International Political Economy

2025. "The Wages of Investor Power: Shareholder Exploitation in Europe" (with Davon Norris) - Social Forces.

2024. "Decarbonization and the Capitalist State" - Sociology Compass. 

2024. "Are IMF Programs Raising Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Global South?Socio-Economic Review

2023. "Who Benefits from Migrant and Female Labor? Connecting Wages to Demographics Changes in French Workplaces" (with Olivier Godechot and Mirna Safi) - Sociological Forum. 38(4): 1198-1219.

2022. “Class Power in Hard Times: Excavating Nicos Poulantzas’s Theory of the Capitalist State through the History of the 2007-8 CrisisCritical Historical Studies. 9(2): 195-220.

2022. “Financialization Goes South: Foreign Capital Flows and Financial Accumulation in Emerging Markets.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology. Available Online.

2021. “Did the ‘Real’ Economy Turn Financial? Mapping the Contours Financialization in the non-Financial Corporate SectorNew Political Economy. 26 (5), 817-831