Agenda

This event is part of VSM Lectures, a series of seminars by top scholars from renowned international universities and institutions. Invited speakers present their recent studies, share key findings, and explore the impact of their research on the challenges currently faced by society and organizations.

The Global Automotive Chain in Transformation: Emerging Economies and Just Transitions
By Lorenza Monaco - Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College of London & University of Johannesburg

This talk explores the Global Transformation of the Automotive Industry from an Emerging Economies and Global South perspective. It outlines recent reconfigurations of the Global Auto Chain, with the rise of new players and changing trade relations. It then draws on the debate on the Dual Transition – Green and Digital, to derive the main implications for Firms, Governments, and Labour in industrialising countries in the Global South. Ultimately, by encouraging us to look beyond the trajectory of core industrialised countries and the interests of industrial super-powers, it questions what Just Transition should really imply, for the many and not for the few. 

Lorenza Monaco (PhD, SOAS London) is a Development Economist specialised in Industrial Development in Emerging Economies, with a special focus on the Automotive Industry and the Global South. She’s Hon Research Fellow at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London, Senior Research Associate at the South African Research Chair in Industrial Development, part of the GERPISA Network, and Fellow of the Italian CiMet. She has published on Industrial Development and Policy Issues with reference to India, South Africa, Thailand, and coordinated research projects across multiple countries. She’s co-editor of the upcoming volume Emerging Auto Industries in a World of Global Value Chains - Actors, Policies and Structural Issues (Palgrave, 2025).