Position: Honorary Professor
School and/or Centres: School of Sociology
Qualification: BSc (Hons) in Economics, Sociology and Statistics, University of Surrey
MSc in Social Research Methods, University of Surrey
PhD, University of Bristol
Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences (FAcSS)
I am Honorary Professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University, and hold a part-time Chair in Global Inequalities at the University of Bristol, UK. I am also Adjunct Professor in the Australian Centre for Housing Research at Adelaide University. I have held professorial appointments since 2002 and have worked across sociology, social policy, urban studies, geography and architecture at Bristol, Newcastle, Goldsmiths, York, Teesside and Surrey. I am a frequent visitor to ANU and contribute to teaching and research activities there.
My previous senior leadership roles include Pro-Warden (Pro Vice-Chancellor) and Head of School at Goldsmiths, and Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of York. I have directed major research initiatives, including the ESRC E-Society Programme, and led research centres and national networks. I currently live and work between the UK and Australia.
Alongside these roles, I have contributed to the development of several journals and research communities. I have served on the editorial boards of Theory, Culture & Society, Body & Society and Information, Communication & Society, and was Co-Editor of Housing Studies. I have published around 180 articles, chapters, books and reports. Recent work has appeared in journals including Thesis Eleven, Housing Studies, Housing, Theory and Society, Information, Communication & Society, International Journal of Housing Policy, Urban Geography, Theory, Culture & Society and the Journal of Cultural Economy. I have supervised 22 PhDs to completion.
I am an interdisciplinary social scientist interested in how systems of classification, valuation and risk are being transformed in contemporary capitalism. A central strand of my work examines what Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy describe as an ‘ordinal society’, in which individuals are continuously ranked and scored rather than placed into fixed social categories.
A second strand focuses on the financialisation of everyday life, particularly in relation to housing and household formation. This includes work on mortgage markets, digital tenant profiling, open banking and the changing role of assets in structuring inequality in the UK and Australia.
A third strand examines the cultural and political infrastructures of neoreactionary ideas through Silicon Valley, AI governance and digital platforms.
More recently, I have been developing collaborative work with Gavin Smith at ANU on urban ecological futures, using the figure of the snake to explore affect, fear and cultural boundary-making in more-than-human urban life.
I am currently working on an ARC Discovery Project with colleagues at Newcastle University, Australia, examining patterns of fintech use among young Australians and their implications for financial behaviour, risk and inequality.