Dr Aisling Gallagher BA, MLitt, PhD

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My research interests lie at the intersection of welfare restructuring, care, social policy and the use of markets and market mechanisms to meet important societal needs.  I take an interdisciplinary approach to my work, drawing together critical literature from social and economic geography, critical social policy, education and social care. Most of my work date has focused on the changing nature of childcare and social reproduction more generally under neoliberalism, notably in the contexts of Ireland, the UK and New Zealand. In 2014 I was awarded funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand to study the marketisation of childcare in New Zealand since 2008. My monograph Childcare in neoliberal times: The marketisation of care (BUP, 2022) was based on this research. 

I also have research interests in the following areas

• The deaccumulation of wealth in later life as we transition to retirement.  I am interested in the kinds of economic and social calculations which are made by individuals and households around material resources like housing, and how this happens differentially within and across the population and places of Aotearoa/NZ
• A related interest is in the growth of different forms of residential and retirement living options for older populations in Aotearoa/NZ as part of my ongoing consideration of the marketisation and financialisation of care. 

I am happy to consider a supervisory role for Masters or Doctoral students in the following areas;

Care, care ethics and the geographies of responsibility; Welfare restructuring and the work of private; voluntary and non-governmental organisations in this space; issues of social and economic inequality; processes of neoliberalisation, marketisation and/or financialisation with regards to the effects on social service provisioning; geographies of gender and work.