Valbona Muzaka

Senior Global Horizons Fellow, SCAS.
Associate Professor, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University

Valbona Muzaka received her PhD in Politics from the University of Sheffield in 2008, after
working and studying in Albania, her native country, and the UK. Prior to coming to Uppsala
in late 2021, she was a Reader in International Political Economy at King’s College London.
She has also worked at the University of Sheffield and the University of Southampton, and held
a number of visiting positions in India and Brazil.

Her work focuses on the material and discursive underpinnings and consequences of the know-
ledge economy as a particular socio-politico-economic formation. Some of the themes explored
are related to the governance of perhaps the most central institution that enables the circulation
of knowledge as commodity and capital, namely intellectual property. Others relate to the way in
which ambitious developing countries, especially India and Brazil, have attempted to navigate the
new dynamics of the global economy in the context of the rise of the knowledge economy. Her
work is published in a number of journals, such as New Political Economy, Review of International
Political Economy, Journal of Agrarian Change, International Studies Quarterly, and others. She
is also the author of two books, The Politics of Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Medicines
(2011), and Food, Health and the Knowledge Economy: The State and Intellectual Property in India
and Brazil (2018).

During her stay at SCAS, Muzaka will focus on how the ongoing financialisation of global health –
a recent, distinct, and transformative phenomenon – has conditioned the development, manufacturing,
and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines across the world.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2022-23.