Rachel Bok

Biography

Rachel Bok is an urban and economic geographer with a focus on critical policy studies, professionals and expertise, and global governance. Her research examines the culture of “solutionism,” the assumption held by actors of global governance that solutions to various crises can be unproblematically mass-produced and rolled out across space and scale. She has explored such questions across fields of urban policy, philanthropy, and infrastructure finance. Her writing has been published in Progress in Human Geography, Urban Studies, The Conversation, and other scholarly and popular outlets. At IMI, she studies the articulations between urban governance and cultures of managerialism. 

She completed her PhD in Geography from the University of British Columbia in May 2024; she holds an MSocSci in Geography from the National University of Singapore; and a BSocSci (Honors) in Geography and English Literature from the National University of Singapore.

A full list of publications is available at Google Scholar.

Academic Appointments 

• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute of Management & Innovation, University of Toronto Mississauga, April 2024— 

Publications

Journal articles 

• Fuentenebro, P., Bok, R., Rosenman, E., and Acuto, M. (accepted)  Geographies of super-philanthropy: Disaggregating the global philanthropic complex. Forthcoming in Dialogues in Human Geography.
• Peck, J., Bok, R., Zhang, J. (2023) Hong Kong — a model on the rocks? Territory, Politics, Governance, 11(1), 100-119.
• Bok, R. (2020) The relational co-production of “success” and “failure,” or the politics of anxiety of exporting urban “models” elsewhere. Urban Geography, 41(9), 1218-1239.  
  • Honorable Mention, Urban Geography Early Career Researcher Prize 
  • Republished in C. Temenos and J. Lauermann (eds) The Urban Politics of Policy Failure. New York: Routledge
• Bok, R. (2019) “By our metaphors you shall know us”: The “fix” of geographical political economy. Progress in Human Geography, 43(6), 1087-1108. 2017
• Bok, R., and Coe, N. M. (2017) Geographies of policy knowledge: The state and corporate dimensions of contemporary policy mobilities. Cities, 63, 51-57. 
• Bok, R. (2015) Airports on the move? The policy mobilities of Singapore Changi Airport at home and abroad. Urban Studies, 52(14), 2724-2740. 2014
• Coe, N. M. and Bok, R. (2014) Retail transitions in Southeast Asia. The International Journal of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 24(5), 479-499.

Book chapters, essays, reviews

• Bok, R. (2022) Régulationist urbanism and the “missing macro” in postmillennial critical urban studies. In: B. Hillier, R. Phillips, and J. Peck (eds) Regulation Theory, Space, and Uneven Development. Vancouver, BC: 1984press, 29-46.
• Bok, R. (2021) The durability of deprivation. City, 25 (5-6), 798-802.
• Bok, R. (2021) Wayfinding in the long shadow of city benchmarking: Or how to manufacture (an economy of) comparability in the global urban. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 45(2), 381-384.
• Bok, R. (2020) In search of ordinary “elsewheres” in global urbanism: on Ola Söderström’s Cities in Relations. In: H. Leitner, J. Peck, and E. Sheppard (eds) Urban Studies Inside-Out: Theory, Method, Practice. London: SAGE, 206-215. 
• Bok, R. (2019) “Urban mobile policy.” In: A. M. Orum (ed) The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Wiley-Blackwell, 1-5.
• Bok, R., and Coe, N. M. (2018) The urban politics of strategic coupling in global production networks. In: K. Ward, A. E. G. Jonas, B. Miller, and D. Wilson (eds) The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Urban Politics. London: Routledge, 70-84.

Teaching (instructor of record)

• Sessional Lecturer at University of British Columbia (2022/2023 Winter Term 2) 
  • GEOG 122 Geography, Modernity and Globalisation (co-taught with Trevor Barnes). Department of Geography (undergraduate) 
• Adjunct Instructor at Singapore Management University (2020/2021 Terms 1 and 2) 
  • COR3001 Big Questions: Global and Local. Office of Core Curriculum, School of Social Sciences (seminar, undergraduate) 
  • COR2208 Technological Solutions to Urban Challenges. Office of Core Curriculum, School of Social Sciences (original course; seminar, undergraduate)