Nathan Coombs

Nathan Coombs serves as Senior Lecturer in Economic Sociology and Director of Undergraduate Programmes at the University of Edinburgh's School of Social and Political Science (2024-2027). His academic journey includes a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (2014-17) investigating financial trading algorithms, co-founding the Finance and Society journal (2015), and co-directing the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE) (2022-25).

His research centers on the intersection of financial governance, political economy, and science & technology studies. Key themes include:

• How central banks exercise infrastructural power through narrative and regulation
• The sociotechnical dimensions of financial algorithms and stress testing
• Democratic implications of technocratic financial stability governance
• Methodological innovations in studying regulatory practices

His current book project The Impossible Performance of Financial Stability argues that post-2008 regulatory frameworks contain constitutive exclusions that undermine their stability goals.

Recent publications reveal a strong focus on central banking transformations, with recurring keywords including financial infrastructure, regulatory power, and state-market boundaries. His 2022-2024 work shows increasing engagement with research impact evaluation through ESRC-commissioned studies.

Supervision includes:

• 3 completed PhDs on financial ontology, innovation apparatus, and yield curve sociology
• 3 current PhDs examining platform governance, macroeconomic expertise networks, and judicial truth construction

Major grants include the Leverhulme Fellowship (2014-17) and ESRC's Scoping Impact project (2023). He co-founded the Finance and Society Network Limited (2023) overseeing journal and conference activities.

His research operates through the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE), where he co-directed interdisciplinary work on research impact and financial governance. Current collaborations focus on 'process impact' methodologies and central bank power dynamics.