Peter Howson

I'm a writer, researcher and Assistant Professor in Geography and Global Development at Northumbria University, Newcastle.

As well as writing regularly for Reuters, The Independent, Jacobin, and other places, I'm the author of 'Let Them Eat Crypto: The Blockchain Scam That's Ruining the World', available now from Pluto Press, and co-editor of 'Crypto Crises: how digital currencies accelerate global instability', available soon with Manchester University Press.

I'm interested in the innovation agendas of conservation and development organisations. And how innovation is often used as camouflage for pinching things from poor people. I also consider how these same technologies are deployed to enable more equitable post-capitalist futures.

My current projects include 'Negotiating NewSpace', exploring the political ecologies of private sector space industries. And analysis of the ‘blue belt’ network of marine protection measures in the UK Overseas Territories. I'm also looking at how cryptocurrencies and carbon trading are coming together to make trees more valuable standing than cut down.

Before joining Northumbria, I was a Lecturer in International Development at Nottingham Trent University. In 2016 I was a Post-doc Researcher at Colorado State University, looking at Palau’s National Marine Sanctuary. Before that, I was based at University of Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand. My PhD research explored the political ecology of climate finance in Indonesia.