2019, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, AdvanceHE, UK

2005, PhD in International Politics, The University of Manchester

2001, MA (with distinction) International Political Economy, The University of Manchester

1997, BA (Hons) Politics, Newcastle University 

Greig has taught Global Political Economy (GPE) at this university since 2004. He is currently Director of Postgraduate Research for the School of Social Science. 

Greig currently teaches the undergraduate course unit POLI31091 Global Capitalism, Crisis and Revolt. In the recent past, he taught courses on the politics of globalisation and critical theories of GPE. 

In 2022, he was a highly commended winner of the Outstanding Teacher Award (Faculty of Humanities), and was a winner of the same award in 2021. 

Greig is Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

He was a longstanding member of the editorial board of the journal Capital & Class, and serves on the advisory board of URBS: Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales (Spain). 

Greig's research is interdisciplinary, and is mainly focused at the intersection between global political economy and urban studies. He is co-author of The Politics of Late Urban Entrepreneurialism (2025, RIPE Series in Global Political Economy, Routledge). 

The book focuses on innovation districts, which are widely seen as a disruptive but generative solution to post-industrial decline and inefficient land use in urban centres, and as an effective means of bringing inclusive economic dynamism, quality jobs and improved public spaces to city neighbourhoods. Their advocates often point to the pioneering example set by the city of Barcelona, Spain, whose now quarter-century old 22@ District is seen as a world leading success story in innovation district transformation. The book challenges the celebratory discourses surrounding the Barcelona case by providing a critical examination of how innovation district transformation has led to periodic crisis and an overproduction of commercial real estate alongside a chronic housing shortage, gentrification, touristification, and a growth in low quality employment, among other damaging results. With a critical eye on how innovation district transformation is conditioned by the prevailing global political-economic context, it also chronicles how this transformation has continually ignited forms of class-based struggle in Barcelona by embattled residents angered at how their own neighbourhood has been used as an urban laboratory and site for speculative forms of capital accumulation. Ultimately, this book challenges the notion that ‘innovation’ is always and everywhere a beneficent force.

Greig is co-author of two other books: David Harvey: A Critical Introduction to His Thought (Routledge, 2023) and The Limits to Capital in Spain: Crisis and Revolt in the European South (Palgrave, 2014). He is co-editor of two volumes: 22@barcelona: Un distrito de innovación en disputa (Icaria, 2023), and The New International Division of Labour: Global Transformations and Uneven Development (Palgrave, 2016).

Greig's current research agenda focuses on contemporary processes of industrial and urban transformation. This agenda represents a natural progression from his collaborative theoretical work on the new international division of labour, with its attention to the shifting dynamics of production and labour markets across the world. In particular, he is interested in whether such developments are so disruptive as to worsen conditions of social-ecological reproduction in the European South, or whether they can be harnessed to enhance democratic means of participation and administration, as well as to generate new and more sustainable economic models at the local scale.

Since 2020, Greig has been a member of the Coworking Research Collective (CORECOL). Seen by many as being integral to 'urban ecosystems of innovation' within digital capitalism, coworking spaces have fast become an integral feature of cities, offering corporate teams, startups and freelancers opportunities to work and network on a flexible basis. CORECOL's ESRC/digit-funded research into the future of UK coworking spaces after the Covid-19 pandemic has found that these spaces have become embroiled in fierce competition with traditional commercial real estate providers of late, with consequences for the future of work and workspaces in English city-regions. 

Greig is a member of the Global Political Economy research cluster in the department of Politics. He is also affiliated to the Manchester Urban Institute.

He is an active member of the Coworking Research Collective (CORECOL), with Ödül Bozkurt (Sussex), Jennifer Johns (Bristol), Harry Pitts (Exeter) and Edward Yates (Sheffield). 

Completed PGR Supervisions

Dr William Harvey (2019) Global Transformations and the British Working Class, 1997-2010. Will is a Senior Policy Advisor at HM Treasury.

Dr Kelvin Charles (2017) The Common in Hardt and Negri. 

Dr Jon Las Heras (2017) Spanish Trade Union Strategy in the Automotive Industry. Jon is Lecturer in Industrial Economics at the Universidad del Pais Vasco (Spain).

Dr Martín Arboleda (2015) Resource Extraction and the Extension of the Urban Form. Martín is Lecturer in Sociology at the Universidad Diego Portales (Chile). 

Dr Giulia Sirigu (2015) Continuity and Change in Mexican Foreign Policy under Fox. Giulia is a Represenative of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in the UK. 

Dr Thomas Houseman (2011) Adorno, Conceptuality and Global Governance Institutions. Tom is Senior Lecturer in Politics & IR at Leeds Beckett University. 

Dr Thomas Purcell (2010) A Marxian Analysis of 'Endogenous Development' in Venezuela. Tom is Senior Lecturer in IPE at King's College, London. 

Dr Japhy Wilson (2009) Abstract Space and the Plan Puebla Panama. Japhy is a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Bangor.