My research

I am a sociologist interested in markets and organizing. I have long been fascinated by how market-based innovations and ‘market thinking’ organize society. My early-career empirical work focused on the ethics and politics of such innovations. I studied the possibility of organ markets, the implementation of ‘fairness’ in transplant allocation, and how online dating enacts instrumentally rational, calculative romances.

I have a maintained a career-long enthusiasm for the sociology of financial markets. My PhD explored the socio-material construction of the non-professional investor. A Leverhulme Trust fellowship allowed me to compile a ‘historical sociology’ of the genesis of two stock exchanges in London in the 1990s, the narrative at the heart of my recent How to Build A Stock Exchange (Bristol University Press, 2023).

I was a member of the editorial group behind the field defining collected volume Market Studies: Mapping, Theorizing and Impacting Market Action, published by Cambridge University Press in 2024, and have recently completed What are Markets For? in Bristol University Press’ ‘What is it For?’ series. Other projects include work with early career colleagues on innovations in graduate recruitment, government bureaucracy, and the financialization of the art market. I am increasingly concerned with the cultural economy of markets, and the role that fiction, expectations, and other imaginaries play in shaping market futures.

You can see more about my academic work, including links to open access papers, on my University of St Andrews page.