Antony Miro Born - Department of Methodology 
Project Title: Social Ladders and the City: Rescripting social mobility in marginalised neighbourhoods
Bio: Anthony Miro Born is a sociologist and geographer with a particular interest in social inequality. He holds a PhD from the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science. Before joining LSE, Miro has taught and worked at Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Potsdam, and Technical University of Berlin. He is currently also affiliated with the Department of Sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Collaborative Research Centre 1265 at Technical University of Berlin.
Summary of Project: Promoting social mobility in marginalised urban communities has become a powerful normative concern in public, political and academic debates. Miro’s doctoral research places the ideal of social mobility itself at the centre of the analysis. Featuring the perspectives of upwardly mobile individuals, family members and long-term residents from stigmatised neighbourhoods, his research explores the contradictions between the lofty promises of social mobility in marginalised areas, its ambivalent politics and its complex manifestations in people’s lived experiences. The ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship will provide Miro with the opportunity to further disseminate these findings. During his ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, Miro will prepare a book manuscript (under contract with Oxford University Press) and a research-based comic book (in collaboration with Irem Kurt).
Further Information and How to Contact:
Email address: a.m.born@lse.ac.uk
Department Profile: https://www.lse.ac.uk/Methodology/People/Academic-Staff/Miro-Born/Miro-Born
Personal Website: www.anthonymiroborn.com
Sacha Hilhorst - Department of Sociology
Project Title: Political disempowerment and economic dispossession in ex-industrial England
Bio: Sacha Hilhorst is a political ethnographer with an interest in the shifting politics of England's post-industrial towns.
Summary of Project: Sacha's project examines the state of political legitimacy in England’s post-industrial towns. Quantitative literatures suggest former mining and manufacturing towns now register high levels of political mistrust and disengagement – patterns which cannot be explained through economics or demographics alone. On the basis of a political ethnography of the towns of Corby and Mansfield, she argues that it has become common for residents of both towns to understand politics primarily through the frame of corruption. The corruption frame derives part of its salience, she finds, from local histories and legacies of deindustrialisation. She interrogates the beliefs and dispositions underlying this vernacular political ontology and its implications for our political system.
Further Information and How to Contact:
Email Address: s.hilhorst@lse.ac.uk
Department Page: https://www2.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/academic-staff/sacha-hilhorst
Personal Website: two-towns.common-wealth.org
Liz Mann - Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (associated with the Department of Social Policy)
Project Title: Wealth matters: exploring the intrahousehold allocation of wealth and the gender wealth gap in the UK
Bio: Liz is ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her research interests centre on wealth and wealth inequality in the UK from a policy perspective. She is particularly interested in the gendered allocation of wealth, and how wealth is managed within the household. Her thesis, ‘Wealth Matters: a UK policy perspective’ completed in the Department of Social Policy also at the LSE, and supported by the Leverhulme Trust, took a multi-method approach to consider these issues. Liz also has an active interest in the taxation of wealth, and attitudes to inequality in the UK. Liz was a contributing author for the Wealth Tax Commission, and participates in the ‘Wealth, elites and tax justice’ research stream at the International Inequalities Institute
Summary of Project: Liz's research explores the organisation of assets and debts between couples who live together and considers the scale of the gender wealth gap in the UK. She demonstrates that household level analysis obscures gender inequalities in wealth. She is further offering evidence of both the gender wealth gap at the national level, and within households. In her qualitative work she gives narrative to the wealth sharing journey, which typically happens progressively over the course of a relationship, but crucially, not in uniform ways. She demonstrates that an income-based perspective offers only limited insight into the complicated ways in which assets and debts are shared or allocated within couples. She further offers new insights into the social meaning placed upon the organisation of wealth within the household. This is a vital development to the small but growing body of literature on the intrahousehold allocation of resources and the gender wealth gap. In so doing she challenge assumptions of equal sharing within the household or indeed within couples.
This research has relevance for academics, campaigners, and policy makers, with cross-cutting implications for numerous fields of research, including social policy, sociology, economics, and law. The policy implications are similarly widespread, including, the design of means tested benefit assessment, tax reliefs and incentives, and legal developments, most notably the stalled Cohabitation Rights Bill, and the financial settlements of divorcing couples. The overarching aim of her fellowship is to consolidate and disseminate findings from her doctoral research.
Further Information and How to Contact:
Email Address: e.c.mann@lse.ac.uk
Department Page: https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/_new/people/person.asp?id=10477
Silvia Pergetti - Department of Anthropology
Project Title: Repair for sustainability and energy transitions
Bio: Silvia is a social anthropologist with 15 years of professional experience working on questions of energy and development. She is a graduate of the LSE and holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh.
Summary of Project: Silvia's research seeks to reshape urgent debates on sustainability and energy transitions by calling attention to the work of maintaining and repairing energy systems. Her doctoral research project documented the centrality of this work to the long-term sustainability of solar energy projects in the Sundarbans region of India – as well as the consequences of its structural devaluation. Her programme for the fellowship aims to amplify this message by disseminating research findings and developing impact opportunities at scale, while looking beyond the timeframe of the fellowship to ensure its long-term legacy.
This aim will be achieved through four interlinked objectives:
- Produce a book manuscript to be submitted for publication
- Communicate research findings to colleagues, students, and the general public
- Undertake a follow-on trip to the Sundarbans to finetune and enrich the book content
- Formulate a grant proposal to extend her work into the future
Further Information and How to Contact:
Email Address: s.pergetti@lse.ac.uk
Department Page: https://www.lse.ac.uk/anthropology/people/silvia-pergetti/Dr-Silvia-Pergetti