Profile
Roles:
Biography:
Nick Taylor is a political economist with research interests in ecological political economy, the history of economic thought and the history of labour market governance and the welfare state. His work is currently split between a focus on the political economy of ecological-related risk within the financial sector, on the political economy of the home and of housing, and on the political economy of work, welfare and labour markets.
He co-authored Unprecedented: How Covid-19 revealed the politics of our economy (Goldsmiths/MIT Press 2022) and has published research on comparative political economy, austerity, employment services and the benefits system in the UK, the cultural political economy of financialization, and sustainability and the financial professions.
Nick has sat on the Sustainability Research and Thought Leadership Committee for the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) since 2018, working with people from across the profession to support understanding of and action on climate-related financial risk. He is a Research Fellow at the ESRC-funded Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), an interdisciplinary research organisation asking what prosperity can mean in a world of environmental, social and economic limits.
Nick joined Queen Mary University of London in 2024. He holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick, an MA in Politics and MA in International Political Economy also from Warwick, and a BA in International Relations from the University of Sussex.
Research
Research Interests:
Nick’s research interests have been split into three broad areas:
- How ecological breakdown is ‘managed’ as risk by the financial sector and particular intermediaries within it, especially actuaries.
- The historical logics and discourses behind the governing of unemployment in the UK, as expressed in economic thought, government policy, state institutions, and broader cultural representations of the unemployed.
- The political economy of social reproduction, including the UK care system in an age of austerity and financialization.
In addition, emerging research interests include:
- The political economy of home, its intersecting spatial, productive, reproductive, infrastructural and financial dimensions.
- The political economy of sustainable agri-food system innovation.
Centre and Group Membership:
Member of the Centre on Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP)
Member of the Accounting and Accountability Research Group (AARG)
Publications
Books
- Taylor, Nick (co-authored with W. Davies, S. Dutta & M. Tazzioli) 2022. Unprecedented: How Covid-19 revealed the politics of our economy, London: Goldsmiths/MIT Press.
- Journal articles:
- Taylor, Nick. 2023. ‘“Making Financial Sense of the Future”: actuaries and the management of climate-related financial risk’. New Political Economy, 28(1): 57-75.
- Taylor, Nick and Davies, William. 2021. ‘The Financialization of Anti-capitalism? The case of the ‘Financial Independence Retire Early’ Community’. Journal of Cultural Economy, 14(6): 694-710.
- Taylor, Nick; with Jones, A.; Hafner, S. and Kitchen, J. 2021. ‘Finance for a future of sustainable prosperity’. Area, 53(1): 21-29.
- Taylor, Nick. 2018. ‘The Return of Character: Parallels between late-Victorian and twenty-first century discourses’, Sociological Research Online, 23(2): 399-415.
- Taylor, Nick (2017) ‘A Job, Any Job: The UK Benefits System and Employment Services in an Age of Austerity’, Observatoire de la Société Britannique, 19: 267-285.
- Taylor, Nick (2014) ‘Theorising Capitalist Diversity: the uneven and combined development of labour forms’, Capital & Class, 38(1): 123-135.
Supervision
Nick welcomes inquiries about PhD supervision in his areas of research interest. He has supervised to completion in his previous role, where he also served as PGR convenor for several years.
Public Engagement
Nick has been a volunteer member of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) Research and Thought Leadership Committee on Sustainability since 2018. The IFoA is the UK’s chartered professional body for actuaries. It has a public interest mandate, and represents over 32,000 members worldwide. In this role he has worked with actuaries from across the profession to consider the impacts of climate breakdown on the financial sector, as well as the impact of the financial sector on climate breakdown.
