Niamh Mulcahy is a Lucy Cavendish Alice Tong Sze Research Fellow and will be at CRASSH until 2022. Niamh completed a PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge in 2019, where she was also a member of King’s College. Her earlier degrees, including a BA (Honours) and MA were undertaken at the University of Alberta, in Canada.
Niamh's doctoral research considered the rise of the “financial subject”, or the “everyday entrepreneur”, in the context of widening economic inequality in the United Kingdom since the 1980s. Risk-taking is rationalised as an opportunity for greater reward: Savings are linked to market performance through investment in private pensions, unit trusts, bonds or assets such as property, while debt, when responsibly managed, can be used to ameliorate short-term periods of uncertainty. Household finance has acquired a more entrepreneurial character as a result, but this is difficult to manage for those facing problems of low income, precarious or short-term employment prospects, and with little wealth, savings, or assets to rely on. The problem of “financial exclusion”, when individuals and households struggle to access necessary financial services or make use of them within their means, therefore deepens inequality and creates new forms of precariousness.
