Oscar Sanchez-Sibony’s work lies in the intersection between politics and economy, and in the space between socialist and capitalist geographies and their interactions with the postcolonial world. It seeks to understand the contemporary international political economy with special attention to how its different iterations layered one upon the other to produce present-day forms of global power. His research explores the interconnections between money, finance, energy and environment, and how power in these central areas of political governance of the world economy is institutionalized. The vehicle he has used for these explorations is the Soviet experiment, which turned out to have been a faithful traveling companion—and often a crucial crutch – to the historical development of global capitalism over most of the 20th century. In two successive volumes, Sanchez-Sibony has centered the Soviet Union's political economy in its relationship with the West and with the postcolonial world. His academic articles have further examined Soviet relations with Japan and with Cuba.

His most immediate research pursues the intellectual development in the 20th century of notions of socialism and capitalism by investigating the imbricated historical evolution of two literary genres: science fiction and Cold War historical writing. The research is predicated on the idea that a cultural approach to historical writing and a historical approach to literary studies can help illuminate the development of each, especially when studied together.