MH Gap

 

Our research focuses on three overlapping topics: (i) the role of financial markets and products in the regulation of poverty in advanced capitalist societies, (ii) the financing of urban development in credit-constrained US cities, and (iii) manufactured housing as a finance-housing assemblage.

What unifies these areas of research is an interest the development and reform of financial markets to ameliorate inequalities related to reduced state funding for housing, welfare and urban development, and the associated redistribution of responsibility and risk to municipalities and individual households. This emphasis on financial innovation and the development of new markets has drawn my attention to the “edges” of the financial system – to places and people for whom credit is scarce.

We treat these financial market “peripheries” as financial borderscapes: growing zones where new risks and uncertainties are managed through improvised repertoires of financial products and practices that map poorly onto traditional binary categories of “mainstream” and “fringe”, “formal” and “informal”, and “public” and “private”. Our exploration these borderscapes is oriented around three objects: subjects, housing technologies and institutional forms.

If you'd like to learn more about what we’re working on, check out our Research pages. If you’d like to work with us, check out the Teaching & Advising page.