Graeme Young is a research associate at the Centre for Sustainable, Healthy and Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods at the University of Glasgow specializing in development theory and the political economy of development. He received his PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2018.

Graeme’s research focuses on the political economy of informal economic activity and explores how political processes, economic institutions, legal and regulatory systems, and urban development projects shape informality in cities in the Global South; how the urban poor experience and respond to state power as they engage in the informal economy; and what the relationship between the informal economy and the state reveals about state power and the political economy of development more generally. Building on his research into informality in Uganda and South Africa, his current book project examines the governance of informal economies as a global phenomenon that is central to understanding the state, the market, and the lives of the urban poor.

Prior to joining the University of Glasgow, Graeme served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, a Visiting Researcher at the University of Cape Town, and a Scholar in Residence at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law.