Thoughtlines: academic thinking outside the box
Series 1 | Episode 7: Niamh Mulcahy – We are what we spend
In this episode, we talk inequality, life chances, and the daily struggle to balance household budgets with Dr Niamh Mulcahy, economic sociologist at CRASSH and Alice Tong Sze Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.
The financial crash of 2008, followed by the UK government’s decade of austerity, and the Covid-19 pandemic has left millions of people in Britain facing a very uncertain future and holding increasingly unmanageable levels of personal debt.
What set us on such a precarious path? How can we return to what Dr Mulcahy terms “steadiness”? And how is her college addressing these challenges in its own backyard?
- Presented by broadcast journalist Catherine Galloway and produced by Carl Homer of Cambridge TV.
- Thoughtlines is available via most podcast platforms.
Learn more:
- Niamh Mulcahy’s book, Class and Inequality in the Time of Finance: Subject to Terms and Conditions, discussed in this episode is available for pre-order:
- Niamh Mulcahy talks more about her research project at CRASSH in this blog post.
- Read Niamh Mulcahy’s recent research paper on financialisation and social behaviour, as discussed in this episode.
- Read more news about Lucy Cavendish College’s ongoing to broaden access to Cambridge: ‘The Wolfson Foundation awards Lucy Cavendish College up to £200,000 towards the cost of new accommodation and learning spaces‘ and ‘Work to start on Lucy’s new Passivhaus development‘.
