School of Social and Political Science

Background

I am primarily a sociologist of markets and have a particular interest in dull or difficult markets. In the past this has involved research on the historical practices of advertising and marketing, particularly of doorstep financial products targeted at the poor including industrial life insurance and credit vouchers. More recently, my research has focused on big data-driven innovations in insurance and insurtech on the one hand, and on cities and civic planning, on the other. 

My most recent publications are:

Editorial: The personalisation of insurance: Data, behaviour and innovation; with Ine Van Hoyweghen and Gert Meyers 

The value of sharing: Branding and behaviour in a life and health insurance company; with Hugo Jeanningros, Big Data and Society

Personalizing solidarity? The role of self-tracking in health insurance pricing. Economy and Society

Books include Markets and the Arts of Attachment (2017) co-edited with Franck Cochoy and Joe Deville, and the monographs  Devising Consumption: cultural economies of insurance, credit and spending (2014) and Advertising: a cultural economy (2004). I am also joint Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cultural Economy.

Having spent many years at the Open University, I have an appetite for teaching and thinking across a variety of media. This resulted in the founding of  AWED, an informal collective that make films and installations exploring the orchestration of civic sentiments and data techniques most recently Closes and Opens: a history of Edinburgh’s Futures.