Samuel Weeks on researching banking, investment funds and art finance in Luxembourg

CERS graduate alumnus profile of Samuel Weeks, PhD 2018, Department of Anthropology.

Please upgrade to a browser that supports HTML5 video or install Flash.Profiles-Sam-LG-gr-0ga.jpg


Dr. Samuel Weeks specializes in economic and political anthropology, with a focus on finance and banking. He holds an A.B. from Colby College, an M.A. from the University of Lisbon, and a Ph.D. from UCLA. Dr. Weeks was an affiliated researcher at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris during 2017-18. His research has been featured in Deleuze and Guattari Studies, Review of Radical Political Economics, and Dialectical Anthropology, among other journals. From 2006 until 2008, he was a U.S. Peace Corps community development volunteer in Cape Verde.

With generous support from CERS, the UCLA International Institute, and the Fulbright/IIE U.S. Student Program, Dr. Weeks was a visiting researcher at the University of Luxembourg during 2015-16. The study he completed in Luxembourg draws from Michel Foucault’s concept of “governmentality” to show how the country’s banking-secrecy laws and political consensus have led to the dramatic growth of its offshore financial center since the 1960s. His research contributes to debates on offshore finance by detailing the views of the professionals who enable these markets in the first place, as well as by presenting a model – “offshore governmentality” – that can be used to analyze how the world’s 80-plus “tax havens” have developed financial centers similar to Luxembourg’s.

Dr. Weeks received a CERS Dissertation Research Fellowship in Summer 2017 for a project on "Secrecy and Consensus: The Governmentality of an Offshore Financial Center in Europe."

CERS GRADUATE ALUMNI PROFILES
A series of articles in which CERS alumni share news about their research, scholarship, professional goals and community projects after graduating from UCLA and discuss how their careers have been influenced by European and Russian Studies.


Please upgrade to a browser that supports HTML5 audio or install Flash.

Audio MP3 Download Podcast

Duration: 1:25

Sam-audio-only-gj-o4p.mp3


Transcript:

1

00:00:04,480 --> 00:00:07,520

Hi everyone,

2

00:00:05,359 --> 00:00:09,200

My name is Sam Weeks. I'm an Assistant

3

00:00:07,520 --> 00:00:11,599

Professor of Anthropology

4

00:00:09,200 --> 00:00:13,120

at Thomas Jefferson University in

5

00:00:11,599 --> 00:00:16,320

Philadelphia,

6

00:00:13,120 --> 00:00:18,480

and I graduated from UCLA in 2018 from

7

00:00:16,320 --> 00:00:20,240

the Anthropology department,

8

00:00:18,480 --> 00:00:22,000

and my dissertation research was on

9

00:00:20,240 --> 00:00:23,279

banking secrecy in the Luxembourg

10

00:00:22,000 --> 00:00:25,599

financial center,

11

00:00:23,279 --> 00:00:26,640

in particular the niches regarding

12

00:00:25,599 --> 00:00:30,160

private banking,

13

00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:32,719

investment funds and art finance. And I

14

00:00:30,160 --> 00:00:35,440

would say that I was lucky to do this

15

00:00:32,719 --> 00:00:37,360

at UCLA for a variety of reasons, the

16

00:00:35,440 --> 00:00:39,280

first of which is that UCLA has strong

17

00:00:37,360 --> 00:00:40,640

language departments.

18

00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:42,320

The second of which is that there's

19

00:00:40,640 --> 00:00:44,079

funding for these kinds of studies at

20

00:00:42,320 --> 00:00:45,920

the International Institute

21

00:00:44,079 --> 00:00:49,360

and at the Center for European and

22

00:00:45,920 --> 00:00:51,199

Russian studies or CERS as it's called.

23

00:00:49,360 --> 00:00:53,840

The third thing would be that CERS has a

24

00:00:51,199 --> 00:00:55,360

great programming calendar of films and

25

00:00:53,840 --> 00:00:56,879

lectures to get you thinking about a

26

00:00:55,360 --> 00:00:59,199

variety of topics having to do with

27

00:00:56,879 --> 00:01:00,960

Europe. And lastly, there are lots of

28

00:00:59,199 --> 00:01:03,120

other scholars and graduate students who

29

00:01:00,960 --> 00:01:04,400

are studying a variety of European

30

00:01:03,120 --> 00:01:07,280

topics.

31

00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:08,159

So I'm very grateful to have been in

32

00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:12,159

this kind of a

33

00:01:08,159 --> 00:01:14,880

context for my graduate student years.

34

00:01:12,159 --> 00:01:16,400

So if you're at ucla, I would highly

35

00:01:14,880 --> 00:01:19,200

recommend that you take advantage of

36

00:01:16,400 --> 00:01:19,759

these opportunities. And if you're out

37

00:01:19,200 --> 00:01:22,320

there

38

00:01:19,759 --> 00:01:26,960

thinking about studying Europe, UCLA is a

39

00:01:22,320 --> 00:01:26,960

great place to do this.


Duration: 1:25

Sam-audio-only-gj-o4p.mp3