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
, 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
in Summer 2017 for a project on "Secrecy and Consensus: The Governmentality of an Offshore Financial Center in Europe."
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.
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Hi everyone,
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My name is Sam Weeks. I'm an Assistant
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Professor of Anthropology
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at Thomas Jefferson University in
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Philadelphia,
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and I graduated from UCLA in 2018 from
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the Anthropology department,
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and my dissertation research was on
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banking secrecy in the Luxembourg
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financial center,
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in particular the niches regarding
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private banking,
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investment funds and art finance. And I
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would say that I was lucky to do this
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at UCLA for a variety of reasons, the
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first of which is that UCLA has strong
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language departments.
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The second of which is that there's
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funding for these kinds of studies at
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the International Institute
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and at the Center for European and
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Russian studies or CERS as it's called.
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The third thing would be that CERS has a
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great programming calendar of films and
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lectures to get you thinking about a
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variety of topics having to do with
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Europe. And lastly, there are lots of
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other scholars and graduate students who
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are studying a variety of European
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topics.
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So I'm very grateful to have been in
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this kind of a
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context for my graduate student years.
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So if you're at ucla, I would highly
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recommend that you take advantage of
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these opportunities. And if you're out
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there
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thinking about studying Europe, UCLA is a
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great place to do this.