My current research looks at how policy, media and cultural texts work together to produce and circulate  commonsense ideas about welfare and the welfare state.  One strand of this examines parenting and family life, and analyses the media and policy production of  'families in crisis', ‘welfare dependent’ or ‘undisciplined’.   I am connecting these ideas to a broader analysis of the 'post-welfare' shift, in which citizen entitlements are becoming contractual, precarious and sanctioned.  My book Parenting The Crisis: the cultural politics of parent-blame explores the connections between parenting culture, policy and neoliberalism and was recently published by Policy Press.  Another strand of this research explored the explosion of a genre of reality television – known as ‘poverty porn’ – which forms part of a populist authoritarianism around welfare.  I have a longstanding interest in reality television as a site of contested class-making and forthcoming research in this area will explore the processes and economics of factual welfare television production.  This particular strand of research also feeds into a series of connected current and future projects on welfare, the welfare state and welfare imaginaries, which explore how ideas of welfare provision have been imagined, represented and mediated over 60 years.

Another new research project concerns the reactivation of eugenic discourse and ideas, especially as they connect to the welfare state in the present austerity moment.  This new project connects welfare history, population and demography, feminist theory and critical race studies, and speaks to the rise of authoritarianism and reproductive politics around the world.