Our online seminars bring researchers into conversation across disciplines and regions.
Online seminar ·
FinTech Capital: Colonial Conditions of Possibility
Paul Langley
Durham University
Opening seminar
This presentation examines FinTech as an emergent mode of capital, constituted through historical financial capitalism and contemporary digital capitalism. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, it considers colonial legacies of financial marginalisation and how FinTech can renovate relations of expropriation and value transfer.
Scheduled.
Start: 10:00 UK time.
Hong Kong 18:00 · Hangzhou / Beijing 18:00 · Manchester 10:00 · London 10:00 · Johannesburg 12:00 · Durham 10:00 All times are local on Monday 16 November 2026.
Paul Langley is Professor of Economic Geography in the Department of Geography at Durham University, UK. Co-authored with Andrew Leyshon, his book FinTech Capital was published in 2026 in the Near Futures series of Zone Books, distributed by Princeton University Press.
Infrastructuring AI: The Technopolitics of Chinese smart cities in Kenya
Iginio Gagliardone
University of the Witwatersrand, SA-UK Bilateral SARChI Chair in the Digital Humanities
Series: AI, Communication, and the Public Life: Critical Global Perspectives
A Communication and the Public (CAP) seminar, organised by Yu Hong in partnership with The Digital Silk Roads and Beyond, with support from Zhejiang University.
Scheduled, subject to ZJU administrative approval.
Start: 20:00 Beijing time.
Hong Kong 20:00 · Hangzhou / Beijing 20:00 · Manchester 12:00 · London 12:00 · Johannesburg 14:00 All times are local on Thursday 10 December 2026.
Iginio Gagliardone is Professor of Media Studies and holds the inaugural SA-UK Bilateral SARChI Chair in the Digital Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is also a Fellow of Wits’ Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery (MIND) Institute. His recent work examines the international politics of artificial intelligence and technological imaginaries in Africa and the Global South.
