Junze Shi wins Economic Geography Research Group Undergraduate Dissertation Prize

Junze's dissertation explores the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on a Chinese commercial bank operating in the City of London. Economic Geography has long placed an emphasis on physical proximity as the most important condition for knowledge transfer and accessing information, particularly within financial centres. The lockdown provided the opportunity for a massive social experiment to test how the sudden absence of proximity impacted the operations of a bank. His dissertation focused on internal relations (between staff and departments) and external relations within and across financial centres (clients, other banks, business services, international offices etc.).

Junze said, "Taking the Geographies of Finance module coincided with a Hilary Term spent at home during lockdown. Working through the reading I thought to myself, some of the existing theories on financial centres must have been negated by remote work. Once I pitched my idea to my supervisor, I knew this was a rare opportunity to plug a gap in the literature."

"It was fascinating to see the responses from different departments within the bank. I expected the front-office to have a hard time given they were client-facing and had regular face-to-face meetings, but it was just as challenging for back-office staff to conduct their support functions. Overall, while the effects diminished with time, technology and pre-existing relations could only substitute physical proximity to a certain extent. Face-to-face interactions still reigned supreme."

"I am very honored to have been awarded this prize for my dissertation. This award is a testament to the world-class teaching offered by the SoGE at Oxford and the wonderful diversity of the BA Geography course. I am especially thankful to my supervisor who guided me throughout the entire research and write-up process. I would also like to thank my tutors at St John's College for their teaching and support. I feel very fortunate to have had an amazing three years at Oxford and winning this award was the cherry on top."

Each year, the Royal Geographical Society's Research Groups recognise outstanding work from undergraduate and postgraduate students at higher education institutions both in the UK and overseas. More information about the prize is available on the RGS with IBG website.