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Dr Mary Robertson

Mary

Lecturer in Business Transitions and Sustainability

Email: mary.robertson@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

Roles:

  • Lecturer in Business Transitions and Sustainability

Biography:

Mary Robertson’s career spans academia and policy. Her research sits broadly in the field of critical political economy, with particular interests in financialisation and rent, which she approaches through the study of housing. Building on her policy work, Mary is also interested in the political economy and politics of sustainability transitions and is currently researching Green New Deals with particular reference to energy.    

Mary has held a number of policy roles, most recently as Senior Policy Officer for Public Services at the Trades Union Congress. Between 2016-20 Mary was Head of Economic Policy for the Labour Party, which involved being staff-level lead for economic policy development and writing the economics sections of Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos.   

Mary holds a PhD and MSc in Economics from SOAS University, London, an MA in Philosophy and Economics from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.  

Teaching

Published textbooks:

Robertson, M. ‘How and why are things consumed?’ in Deane, K. and E. Van Waeyenberge (2020) ‘Recharting the History of Economic Thought,’  Red Globe Press/MacMillan Education Ltd

Research

Research Interests:

Dr Robertson's main interests lie in: Housing, rent, political economy, climate change, systems of provision, financialisation. 

Publications

  • Robertson, M. (2024). State, capital and nation in Green New Deal Politics: lessons from the British Labour Party’s 2019 programme. New Political Economy, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2024.2405540
  • Robertson, M. (2024). Rent and financialisation as concrete totality: The case for provisioning approaches as method of abstraction. Progress in Human Geography, 48(1), 18-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325231214453
  • Bayliss, K., Fine, B., Robertson, M., & Saad-Filho, A. (2024). Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated: The persistence of neoliberalism in Britain. European Journal of Social Theory, 27(4), 540-560. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241241800
  • Robertson, M. (2023). Reform versus Transformation: Reflections on the Legacy of Corbynism’s Economic Programme. Historical Materialism, 31(3), 3-32. https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206x-bja10024
  • Bayliss, K., B. Fine and M. Robertson (eds) (2019) Material Cultures of Financialisation, Routledge
  • Bayliss, K., B. Fine and M. Robertson ‘The systems of provision approach to understanding consumption’ in Kravets, O., P. Maclaran, S. Miles and A. Venkatesh (eds) (2018) The SAGE Handbook of Consumer Culture, SAGE Publications Ltd
  • Bayliss, K., B. Fine and M. Robertson (2017) Introduction to special issue on the material cultures of financialisation, New Political Economy, 22:4, 355-370
  • Mary Robertson (2017) (De)constructing the financialised culture of owner-occupation in the UK, with the aid of the 10Cs, New Political Economy, 22:4, 398-409
  • Robertson, M. (2017) ‘The Great British Housing Crisis’, Capital and Class, 41:2, 1-21

Supervision

Available to supervise PhDs in housing and financialisation, rent theory, Marxist political economy, Systems of Provision, Green New Deals/transformative policy debates.

Public Engagement

Member of the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy and Reteaching Economics.

Former Head of Economic Policy for the Labour Party (2016-20); Senior Policy Officer for Public Services at the Trades Union Congress (2020-21)

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