I am a political economist whose main research interests are the political economy of European integration and the European Union, with a special focus on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Both my research and teaching are heavily interdisciplinary, drawing on and blending insights, concepts and methods from a wide range of social sciences. In the 2025-26 academic year, I will be an assistant professor (maître de conférences) at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. In previous years, I have been a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Geneva and an assistant professor at Sciences Po Grenoble, while I have also been a research fellow at the European University Institute, Sciences Po Bordeaux and Université Saint-Louis in Brussels. I earned my PhD at the University of Montpellier in France.

The main theme of my work is how corporate capitalism and power have shaped and continue to shape European integration. My first research monograph lays out a theoretical framework for thinking about corporate influence and subsequent work explores in detail how such influence has shaped the development of EMU. I have also pursued a comparative-historical strand of research, in which I compared American Political Development and European integration as processes of political development shaped by corporate capitalism and power.

My work has appeared in Economy & Society, Socio-Economic Review, Comparative European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of European Integration, Politics & Governance, Politique Européenne, Historical Materialism and elsewhere.

Research monograph

1. Les Grandes Firmes Françaises et l’Union Européenne
Le Croquant, 2017 (link)

Edited volumes

2. The Left and the Question of European Unification, from World War I to the present Co-edited with Sigfrido Ramirez-Perez, under contract at Routledge (scheduled for publication in early 2026).

1. Penser l’émancipation
Co-edited with Hadrien Buclin, Joseph Daher and Pierre Raboud. La Dispute, 2013 (link)

Articles in peer-reviewed journals

15. “The structural power of finance, the quest for EU safe assets and the prospect of a permanent EU borrowing capacity”
Online first at Journal of European Public Policy (link)

14. “A reinterpretation of EMU history: imbalances, financial risks and corporate power”
Online first at Socio-Economic Review (link)

13. “Les investisseurs européens et le chemin vers l’union fiscale et budgétaire”
Mouvements, 120, 14-23, 2025 (link)

12. “Regulation or capacity for the EU’s fiscal future? From the Werner and McDougall reports to the current conjuncture”
Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, 36(2), 200-216, 2024 (link)

11. “Fiscal Rules and Federal Capacity in American Fiscal History: Lessons for Europe?”
Politics & Governance, 11(4), 82-91, 2023 (link)

10. “Fiscal federalism and the challenge of the green transition in the EU”
Journal of European Integration, 45(6), 871-887, 2023 (link)

9. “Corporate Power and the Resolution of the Eurozone Crisis”
Politique Européenne, 2022/3, 77, 66-115, 2022 (link)

8. “Europe’s Hamiltonian moment? On the political uses and explanatory usefulness of a recurrent historical comparison”
Economy and Society, 51(1), 138-159, 2022 (link)

7. “Des pouvoirs fiscaux fédéraux: un objectif majeur pour la gauche européenne”,
Savoir/Agir, 2021/4, 58, 75-83 (link)

6. “Corporate reconstructions of federal macroeconomic government institutions compared: USA then, Europe now”
Comparative European Politics, 19(3), 401-432, 2021 (link)

5. “La polarisation des élites administratives et économiques françaises et le conflit sur l’orientation stratégique du capitalisme français”
Mouvements, 95, 23-31, 2018 (link)

4. “British Capitalism and European Unification, from Ottawa to the Brexit Referendum”
Historical Materialism, 25(1), pp 90-127, 2017 (link)

3. “Les élites managériales françaises et la politique industrielle”
Outre-terre. Revue européenne de géopolitique, 46, pp 231-251, 2016 (link)

2. “The Eurozone Crisis and the European Corporate Elite: Bringing Corporate Actors into Focus”
Economy and Society, 45(1), pp 51-76, 2016 (link)

1. “‘Whatever It Takes’: The Eurozone Crisis as a Catalyst of European Integration”
The Cyprus Review, 26(1), pp 63-80, 2014 (link)

Book chapters

2. “Unification from Above, its Contradictions and the Conjuncture Initiated by the Eurozone Crisis”
in Eva Nanopoulos and Fotis Vergis (eds) The Euro-Crisis as a Multidimensional Systemic Failure of the EU: The Crisis Behind the Crisis, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 2019, pp 295-314 (link)

1. “Intégration européenne” in Andy Smith et Colin Hay (eds) Dictionnaire d’économie politique,
Presses de Sciences Po (Paris), 2018, pp 264-276 (link)

Current teaching

In the current academic year, I teach subjects in economic history, political economy and public policy at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. I will also be teaching a seminar in public policy at the University of Lausanne.

Past teaching

Over the years, I have taught various subjects in several French and Swiss universities (University of Geneva, University of Lausanne, Sciences Po Grenoble, Université Lyon 2, Université Lyon 3). Below I provide a selection.

European Studies

“Politiques de l’Union européenne” – Bachelor, Université Lyon 2, 2018-19

“Théories des Relations Internationales et Union européenne” – Bachelor, University of Geneva, 2017-20

“Economie politique de la zone euro” – Master, University of Geneva 2020-22

“Introduction to EU studies” – Bachelor, Geneva School of Diplomacy, 2022-24

International Relations

“International Political Economy” – Bachelor, University of Geneva 2019-20

“International Relations and Domestic Politics” – Master, University of Geneva, 2019-20 and 2024-25

“Introduction aux Relations Internationales” – Bachelor, University of Geneva, 2024-25

“Politique internationale et comparée” – Bachelor, Sciences Po Grenoble, 2023-25

“Philosophie des Relations Internationales” – Bachelor, Université Lyon 3

Social science methods and other subjects

“Methods seminar for final dissertation” – Bachelor, University of Geneva, 2017-20 and 2022-23

“Introduction à la recherche” – Bachelor, University of Lausanne, 2023-24

“Sociologie politique” – Bachelor, Sciences Po Grenoble, 2023-25

My broad research interests are in international/global political economy, comparative-historical sociology and the study of European integration.

I have carried out three distinct research projects over the years.

1. French corporate and administrative elite strategies and influence over European integration

My PhD explored in detail the strategies pursued by French corporations and corporate and administrative elites in, and their influence over, the process of European integration, with a focus on the period stretching from the early 1980s to the Great Financial Crisis.

My account is based on the core proposition that the political economy of European integration during that period is shaped by the process through which formerly national champion firms Europeanised their production networks starting in the 1970s. That process has created an integrated European economy structured by supply chains spanning the single market. I thus analyse in successive chapters of my 2017 monograph the Europeanisation of corporate political activism and the rise of a European corporate elite, the gradual redeployment of microeconomic policies to the European level, the (partial) Europeanisation of the financial system, the stalled Europeanisation of the market for corporate control and finally the making of EMU as resulting from the same fundamental process.

Side products of this project include a historical article on the evolving political economy of UK-EU relations and two other articles on what I analyse as the split in French corporate and administrative elites that took shape over the 1990s between industrialist and orthodox liberal poles.

2. Corporate power and the development of EMU

Starting in 2016, I have published a series of journal articles exploring, first, the way in which corporate power and agency shaped the politics of and policy response to the Eurozone crisis of 2008–12 and, second, the way in which they have shaped the broader development of EMU both before and after the Eurozone crisis. I argue that the key conflict that has structured the development of EMU is that between pan-European corporations (in particular the financials) and the “ordoliberal coalition” in Germany and its allies in other “frugal” member states – and that at each deciseve turn of the road the corporates and their supporters and allies in the member states and the EU institutions (the Commission and the ECB first and foremost) have carried the day.

I am planning to pursue further this research stream with the aim of publishing a research monograph provisionally titled “Capitalists against ordoliberals: a reinterpretation of EMU development”.

3. Comparative-historical analysis of American political development and European integration, focusing on monetary and fiscal policies

This is a project for which I received a grant (196676) from the Swiss National Science Foundation in 2021–23. The project was essentially an attempt to explore the plausibility of generalising my theory of the political economy of European integration to the case of American political development. Having been inspired during my PhD by revisionist and New Left historical accounts of American political history, which argue that the Progressive Era and the New Deal were the “triumph of conservatism” (Gabriel Kolko) in that corporate elites were at the driving seat of remaking the American political economy and polity in ways congenial to the smooth functioning of corporate capitalism, I set out to compare and contrast systematically European integration and American political development (from the 1890s to the 1950s). The project yielded a set of journal articles.

I am now working on expanding the comparison to encompass the case of post-1978 China, in what would be a new and much more ambitious project provisionally titled “Corporate capitalism and political development: A comparative-historical analysis of the United States, the European Union and the People’s Republic of China”.

Videos of public debates

1. “Dette publique et politiques économiques européennes: que faire?”
Débat organisée par GDS le 4 mai 2021 avec Manon Aubry (GUE/LFI), Jean-Marie Harribey (économiste), Benjamin Lemoine (sociologue) et Christakis Georgiou.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6T0wksIOa4

2. “Crise géopolitique”
Débat organisé par GRS le 5 mai 2020, avec Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Gaëtan Gorce, Quentin Michelon, Pierre Laurent, Roberto Romero et Christakis Georgiou.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxwrfB_1nm0&t=2s

3. “Changer l’Europe, comment faire?”
Débat aux rencontres nationals de GDS le 14 Octobre 2018, avec Marie-Christine Vergiat, Pierre Kalfa et Christakis Georgiou.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh5qXOF6F-U

Articles in online magazines and Mediapart blog

1. Jacobin.
https://jacobin.com/author/christakis-georgiou

2. Contretemps web.
https://www.contretemps.eu/author/christakis-georgiou/

3. Mediapart blog.
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/christakis-georgiou/blog

4. The Conversation
Christakis Georgiou – The Conversation

5. La Vie des Idées
Christakis Georgiou – La Vie des idées

Expert report

1. Economic Governance in the EU after the Eurozone crisis.
Report for Transform! Europe foundation, July 2017.
https://transform-network.net/publication/economic-governance-in-the-eu-after-the-eurozone-crisis/