Join us for our lunchtime Research Seminar Series where we showcase research from our department and invite guest speakers to present on their work. The event lasts an hour, with about 45 minutes of research presentation and 15 minutes for questions at the end. The topics are as varied as the research centres within the department: the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), the Centre for the Analysis of Social Policy (CASP) and the Centre for Death and Society (CDAS).

About this event

Marcos González Hernando's latest book examines the intellectual and institutional transformations of four British think tanks in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. In the context of a crisis of expert authority, the book demonstrates how these organisations modified their mode of public engagement to be seen as authoritative as possible by an ever more mistrustful public.

British Think Tanks After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis connects sociological thinking on knowledge with research on policy change and the economic debate, through careful analysis of interviews, public accounts, and the ‘products’ of think tanks themselves. The book argues that demands for knowledge and advice that arose after the crisis energised the work of all four think tanks while also exposing internal tensions, affecting their sources of funding, transforming their institutional structure, and shaping how they engage with their audiences.

Speaker

Marcos González Hernando is an Affiliated Researcher at the University of Cambridge, Senior Researcher at FEPS-Think Tank for Action on Social Change, and Managing Editor at Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory. He is interested in the political sociology of knowledge production, economic debates, the history of the social sciences, and the relationship between experts, elites, and public policy.