Newcastle University

I am an associated researcher with Newcastle Law School. A video of my opening the inaugural seminar of the Finance and Financial Law Working Group can be found here. 

EDUCATION

PhD University of Chicago

MSc London School of Economics

MA  University of Chicago

BS  Georgetown University (Highest Honors)         

Areas of Expertise

English banking history; UK banks and building societies; cultural theory.

Research Interests

Monetary theories of the business cycle; concepts and measures of systemic banking risk; and the links between money and cultural meaning.

Re-Building Society: Northern Rock as a Real Abstraction

I am currently preparing my doctorate dissertation for publication: a case study of the Northern Rock bank, exploring the causes, consequences, and character of its recent crisis. My thesis is that the Northern Rock crisis is rooted in the gap between the economic substance of financial relations and the way empirical experience obscures them. Recent events laid bare this conceptual chasm, in the process making the lived experience of financial relations align more closely to their legal form, with traumatic effect. The Northern Rock and financial crises have thus gained saliency because they literally and figuratively violate common sense. The dissertation teases out the tension between empirical experience and the abstractions concealed beneath them through an examination of the political debates, lawsuits, and economic externalities such tensions provoke among employees, equity holders, and depositors.