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Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds

I am Founding Director of the Bauman Institute. A sociologist of economic life, I lead the 'Money, Debt, and Financial Futures' stream.

My primary research focus is in the sociology of money, markets and morality with a particular focus upon the social consequences of consumerism, financialization and marketization in heavily-indebted neoliberal societies.

I am interested in the capture and translation of the social world by economic interests, specifically how human freedom is reduced to market choice and how extreme levels of indebtedness are reconciled with the challenge of creating fairer, more resilient, and more sustainable societies around the world.

This work has led me to engage directly with the alternative finance movement in the UK, both in terms of critically assessing innovative forms of social lending and borrowing (P2P Finance, crowdfunding, community shares) to disrupt conventional economic behaviours, and in terms of evaluating the social impact of different models for funding large-scale renewable energy developments

Experience

  • –present
    Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Leeds