Alec Fiorini
Email: alec.fiorini@qmul.ac.uk
Profile
I am a PhD candidate at the School of Business and Management with a background in philosophy (B.A., DePaul University, 2016), social sciences (M.A., University of Chicago, 2017), and international relations (Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 2014). Prior to my PhD project, I also worked as a researcher at the Organization for Economic Development and Co-operation’s Global Relations Committee. I have co-authored several academic articles on the social agency of children living under Israeli occupation and as well as miscellaneous book reviews concerning the politics of the global energy transition.
Project title
The Fertilizer Frontier: Capital, Nitrogen, and Sovereignty in the Mediterranean Basin
Project description
The project examines the political economy of industrial chemical supply chains in the Mediterranean. More specifically, it explores the ecological and geopolitical ramifications of the European Union’s regulatory effort to decarbonize its fertilizer supply chains through the uptake of ‘green’ hydrogen. As a frontline industry for the consumption of these low-carbon industrial feedstocks, inorganic fertilizers offer a preliminary vantage into the economic logics, political motivations, and metabolic interactions that will underpin this new socio-ecological regime of green capital accumulation. The research is attentive to the restructuring of downstream production processes, especially in renewably source-abundant North African states, to meet the EU’s climate stabilization targets.
Supervision
1st Supervisor: Elena Baglioni
2nd Supervisor: Shreya Sinha