About me

Between 2005 and 2021 I sold my labour-power to the University of Leicester, where I was an associate professor of finance and political economy. Before that I worked at University of Leeds and Nottingham Trent University. I was made redundant by Leicester university in 2021, part of a process which involved bosses attacking academic freedom and critical thinking and disproportionately targeting UCU organisers.

Most of my current research is on finance, especially so-called social finance. I’ve also published on globalisation, social movments, value theory and commons and commoning. You can find out more about my professional personna here. Almost all of my publications are available on Academia.edu and ResearchGate.

I’ve written a few pieces about the political economy of higher education, using Marx’s categories — including value, class, alienation and enclosure (and also the antithesis of enclosure — commons) — to try and make sense of our situation and how we struggle against it. These four pieces — ‘Alienation, class and enclosure in UK universities’ (Capital and Class, 2000); ‘Commons and communities in the university: some notes and some examples’ (The Commoner, 2004); ‘Value production and struggle in the classroom: Teachers within, against and beyond capital’ (Capital and Class, 2005); and, ‘“Cognitive capitalism” and the rat race: how capital measures immaterial labour in British universities’ (with Massimo De Angelis; Historical Materialism, 2009)– were all published more than a decade ago, but I think their analysis is as relevant today as it was then.

For five years I was Leicester UCU’s Communications officer, becoming Vice-Chair in August 2021, a post I occupied for just 11 days before my dismissal. Some of my thinking UCU militancy are in this piece, coauthored with my comrade, friend and former colleague Gareth Brown. See also this interview, published in Organizing Work.

For a decade and a half, I was part of The Free Association writing collective. I am currently one of the contributors to this very occassional blog, Everything for Everyone and am one of the creators of these Aftermathematics videos. I’m a member of Plan C and I sing with Commoners Choir.