Dr Ryan Davey

(he/him)

Publication

• Date
• Type
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Research

My research focuses on household debt, class inequality, power relations, and human subjectivity. It contributes to research in social anthropology, sociology and critical policy studies.

Going beyond debates about class-based identities in the United Kingdom, my doctoral project in anthropology argued that de-industrialisation and financialisation have transformed the foundations on which such identities are built. Through fourteen months’ ethnographic fieldwork on a housing estate in southern England, I found that many UK citizens today rely on borrowing and benefits to make ends meet. This makes them vulnerable to eviction or their benefits being stopped – a situation I described as ‘expropriability’. The state’s power to dispossess poorer citizens of their homes, possessions and sometimes children impinges on those people's ability to envisage better lives for themselves. I proposed that class oppression arises from inequalities in people’s relation to the means of legal coercion, and not just (as in classical Marxist theory) to the means of production.

Austerity’s effects on inequality were the focus of my postdoctoral research at the London School of Economics (LSE). My work on debt advice examined ‘financialised’ forms of social welfare that rely on, or encourage, financial speculation. More recently, my research fellowship at the University of Bristol and a collaboration with feminist political economists for the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)’s Rebuilding Macroeconomics programme explored the cultural and material links between gender, class inequality, households and economic policy.

Public engagement

Podcasts:

• Financial Recovery from Covid-19: Opening the Black Box of the Household - click here
• Austerity, Debt - What Alternatives? - click here
• Wicked Problems in the World of Debt Advice - episode 12 of Camthropod: Cambridge Anthropology Podcast - click here

Articles and reports:

• Debt advice in a time of austerity: is it time to talk about debt cancellation? Quarterly Account: the journal of the Institute of Money Advisers - click here
• Can churches challenge class inequality? The case of debt advice. Theos Think Tank - click here
• Debt collection and mental health: the evidence report. Royal College of Psychiatrists and Money Advice Trust - click here

Academic advisory:

• I am a member of the academic advisory network for Debt Justice, formerly Jubilee Debt Campaign.

Teaching

What I teach

I am part of the Sociology teaching team. My main teaching duties are:

• Convening the module Gender Relations and Society, and
• Co-convening the module Contemporary Inequalities. 

I also teach on the following modules:

• Ethnography and Everyday Life
• Live Theory (on the anthropology of violence and subjectivity)
• Introduction to Social Science Research (on ethnography)
• Introduction to Sociology (on gender)
• Sociological Inquiries (on credit and debt)
• Advanced Qualitative Methods (masters level)
• Global Political Economy (on financialisation; masters level)
• Monsters and Mysteries (on cross-cultural perspectives).

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Office hours

I have regular office hours during the teaching term (i.e. when lectures and seminars are running). During this time, students are welcome to drop in to speak to me with any questions. This includes my personal tutees as well as any students who are part of modules that I teach. 

My office is room 2.08 in the Glamorgan Building (north building). To find it, take the stairs or lift from the main lobby of the Glamorgan Building.

For personal tutees

Personal tutees may contact me with any questions or issues as follows:

• Email me any time. I aim to respond within 2 working days; after that you are welcome to send me a reminder.
• Visit my office during my office hours as above or email me to arrange a time to talk.

Biography

Before coming to Cardiff University, I held an early career fellowship at Bristol, worked and studied in anthropology at SOAS, the LSE and Cambridge, and worked for two mental health charities.

Professional memberships

• European Association of Social Anthropologists
• Association of Social Anthropologists of Great Britain

Speaking engagements

Recent presentations include:

• 'Household Finance in an Unequal World' conference at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany, 5-6 December 2024. Paper title: 'Renewing the method of "internal comparison" in ethnographies of household debt'.
• 'Queering social reproduction: queer materiality in its ambivalence'. Double panel at the European Association of Social Anthropologists biennial conference at the University of Barcelona, Spain, 23-26 July 2024. (Co-convenor of panel as part of 'QARX' collective, sponsored by the European Network for Queer Anthropology.)
• 'Class in contemporary Britain'. Panel event at Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye, 1 June 2024. (Lead organiser.)

Committees and reviewing

Peer reviewer for American Ethnologist, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Economy and Society, Journal of Cultural Economy, Critique of Anthropology, Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, Europaea Ethnologia, Qualitative Research, Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Book proposal reviewer for UCL Press.

Supervisions

I welcome email inquiries from prospective PhD and ProfDoc students for ethnographic projects in the following areas:

• debt, especially household debt (from consumer credit to rent and council tax arrears); debt advice
• sexuality, intimacy (especially non-normative intimacies), social reproduction and care
• labour, production, accumulation and capitalist transformation; finance and financialisation
• queer Marxism - a shorthand for studying how the previous two bullet points interact
• coercion, dispossession and expropriation (e.g. eviction, debt recovery, child removal)
• subjectivity, affect and the psyche
• class and inequality
• ethnography

Current PhD students

I co-supervise the following projects:

• Rebecca Messenger - ‘Marginalised mothers and normative parenting culture: an ethnographic study of childrearing among mothers on a low income during the pandemic’.
• Josip Toogood - ‘Against all odds: the gambling experiences of young men in the UK’.
• Bryn Morgan - 'Masculinity and suicide bereavement postvention support: an interpretive exploration into how to support men bereaved through suicide to access postvention services.' (Professional Doctorate.)

Current supervision

Joey Toogood

Research student

Rebecca Messenger

Research student

Bryn Morgan

Research student