Welcome to Keeping Up with the Neoliberals

Welcome to Keeping Up with the Neoliberals, a personal blog where I’ll be posting regular pieces coming out of my research on neoliberal ideology. The broad aim is to keep track of what neoliberal think tanks, intellectuals, and activists have been, and are, up to in the recent past.

I started this blog for several reasons.

For one thing, I wanted to have somewhere I can post regular updates on my ongoing research, interesting archival finds, or theoretical problems I’m wrestling with. As is natural, during my research I hit upon many interesting discoveries that for one reason or another don’t make it into my published work. Having somewhere to share these makes them available for others working on similar material.

For another, I’m most productive when I’m writing to a deadline, and I felt that having a blog that requires regular updating would nudge me to write more consistently. And because for me writing is a form of active thinking this will also help me crystallise some of the arguments I’m hoping to make in forthcoming publications.

In the first instance, this blog will host updates on three ongoing research projects.

The first is a project on the racial dimensions of neoliberalism, which I’ve worked on for eight years now and which has led to my first book, Neoliberalism and Race, forthcoming with Stanford University Press. I’ll be posting about the book as publication nears, about some of the findings that didn’t make it into the book, and announce other publications on this theme.

The second is a project on neoliberalism and the far right, which overlaps with the project on race in important ways but has its own research agenda. Here I’ll share some of my own archival findings, discuss other contributions to ongoing scholarly debate, and engage in some occasional theory building.

The third project speaks to the ongoing existential crisis faced by higher education, which I trace back to neoliberal ideas about university financing. My focus will be on Britain, though there’ll be the occasional overseas excursion. Here I’ll build on my ongoing research into the intellectual history of key university reforms, such as the introduction of student fees and loans in Britain.

I hope in due course to host some other miscellaneous work, including guest posts, reviews, or announcements.

In the meantime, to get a better sense of my motivation for writing this blog, please see my first post, Why Keep Up with the Neoliberals?, here.

I hope you find something of interest here!