Simen Hennum

Simen Hennum (he/him) is currently pursuing an MA in Geography at the University of British Columbia, where I also completed a BA in Honours in Geography in 2022. My research interests lie primarily with the fields of geographical political economy, economic geography, and labor geography. I am particularly interested in social and political responses to forms of precariousness engendered by changing forms of work. I am also interested in questions of uneven development as theorized in geography and related disciplines, with a particular interest in how so-called national ‘models’ or ‘varieties’ of capitalism are constructed and positioned in relation to processes taking place elsewhere and ‘outside’ of those geographical areas.

Project Description

My MA thesis work is centered on two lines of inquiry. The first is an exploration of the geographies and politics of labor market regulation, centered primarily on a case study of the recent re-regulation of the Norwegian temporary staffing industry. I explore the contested politics of regulating triangular employment relations (between workers, temporary staffing agencies, and client firms), and situate this in the multiscalar context of European Union labor regulation. The second line of inquiry consists of an effort to spatialize the literature on the so-called Nordic model of capitalism by placing it in conversation with work in geographical political economy.