Egle Tsirova
Thesis Title: Does neoliberalism create more harmful societies?
In recent years interest has grown in the concept of social harm as a form of interdisciplinary enquiry that can provide accurate and systematic analyses of injury in capitalist societies. This methodological lens offers a sophisticated picture of social injury, enabling us to understand the interrelated nature of harm, its social patterning, and how its impacts accumulate across one’s life. A principal motivation for this work has been to document the purported harms caused by the neoliberal restructuring that has reshaped advanced industrialised societies since the late 1970s. A key – yet largely untested claim of the social harm approach is that neoliberal reforms have eroded the ability of states to regulate market activity and weakened public institutions designed to protect populations from socioeconomic harms – creating more harmful societies. Firstly, this research project will make a significant contribution to the operationalisation of the social harm definition and the development of aetiological models of harm production. Secondly, this project will adopt a longitudinal research design and advanced quantitative methods to investigate causal relationships between neoliberalism and social harms. Lastly, this project will investigate which demographic groups experience more social harms caused by neoliberalism. The purpose of this research is to promote a structural change – the identification of harmful features of neoliberalism will inform policy on which features should be designed out of our societies to minimise the occurrence of social harms. This project will also inform policy on which demographic groups may require the most protection from social harms created by neoliberalism.
Biography
Egle is a quantitative researcher who joined the University of Birmingham in 2015. She completed a BA degree in Social Policy and Criminology in 2019 and an MA degree in Social Research (Social Policy) in 2021. Egle started her PhD degree in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology in 2021. Apart from her studies, she has worked as a Quantitative Research Assistant on a project investigating energy poverty in Latin American countries. Since 2021 she has also been working as a Teaching Associate and is responsible for teaching seminars for the LC Social Research I and II modules at the University of Birmingham.
Social Policy
University of Birmingham
2022 Cohort, +2.5
https://twitter.com/EgleTsirova1
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/egletsirova
Supervisory Team
Prof Simon Pemberton
Dr Miguel Ribeiro Ramos