Mia Gray

I am a Professor of Economic Geography at Cambridge University. One of my major research interests is in the economic and political repercussions of austerity. My research examines the intertwining economic, social and political effects on the local decisions around austerity and the shaping of the local state. My work explores the uneven nature of the austerity cuts, territorial injustice, and the effect on place and people.

I also examine these issues in relationship to debt. I have co-edited a book on Debt and Austerity, Debt and Austerity Implications of the Financial Crisis. The book explores the ways in which debt became interwoven with the international finance system, the nation state, local governments, legal and welfare systems, households, and the personal and intimate lives of people on low incomes. I explore the “mobility of debt” – the institutional transmission mechanisms through which the burden of debt is reconfigured, repackaged, and pushed onto others. This mobility includes the increasingly “innovative” ways in which debt is traded on global markets; how debt is downloaded from one level of governance to another; the ways in which private debt is transformed into public debt; and the ways in which governmental debt becomes personal debt.

As part of this interest in austerity and debt, I have collaborated with Menagerie Theatre Company on an interactive play, The Great Austerity Debate, which explores the themes of austerity, precarious work, the ethics of care, and debt.

I am also an Editor of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society which publishes multi-disciplinary international research on the spatial dimensions of contemporary socio-economic-political change.