Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation

CRESI is the home of economic sociology at Essex, carrying out pathbreaking research on economic sociology, economic justice, and the political economy of economic inequalities. We have a strong interest in critically challenging regimes of power that compound wealth concentration and perpetuate different forms of racial capitalism and worker exploitation. Our centre is led by scholars who have made pioneering contributions to the political economy of corporate power, critical scholarship on global philanthropy, feminist political economy, the sociology of power and ignorance, cultural economy, and political anthropology. Our research interests include the following:

• the finitude of earth's resources (land, water, energy)
• human rights and economic justice
• feminist political economy
• welfare regimes and pensions
• racial capitalism, slavery and forced labour, historical and contemporary
• the pharmaceutical industry
• work and employment
• gender budgeting and fiscal sociology
• economies of knowledge and epistemic injustice.

We emphasize the value of collaborative research within the Department of Sociology, as well as interdisciplinary research with researchers and staff in other parts of the University. We have close links to the Human Rights Centre, the Centre for Discourse and Ideology Analysis (CIDA), the Essex Business School, the Essex South Asia Research Network (ESARN), and Health and Human Sciences.

CRESI hosts regular seminars featuring internationally renowned speakers and guests, as well as facilitating visiting student and professorial research visits from scholars across the world. Many of our webinars and events are organised in close collaboration with student groups, including the Essex Students’ Union, the Black Social and Political Society (BSPS), and a student-led webinar on resource use and democracy in Bolivia. 

A number of different theoretical approaches and substantive areas of focus are strongly represented within the Centre. These include:

• Network theory and science and technology studies (STS)
• Feminist political economy
• Political ecology
• Global justice, reparations and mutual aid
• Human rights theory, racial justice and economic justice
• Post-Marxist theory
• Urban and political anthropology
• Neo-Polanyian approaches
• Sociology of consumption
• Economic history
• Cultural economy and history
• Bazaars and popular economies

Through our research, our regular seminars, and conferences, we stimulate dialogue between these approaches, contributing new insights to research on global economic inequality, global philanthropy, tax justice, racial capitalism, urban economics and political anthropology, and economies of care.

CRESI was established by Founding Director Professor Mark Harvey in 2007. Professor Harvey is the author of numerous influential books, including, most recently, Inequality and Democratic Egalitarianism: 'Marx's Economy and Beyond' and Other Essays (2018, authored with Norman Geras). With his strong research focus on political economy, the circulation of global commodities, and theories of economic justice, Professor Harvey positioned CRESI to play an important role in national and international discussions about efforts to combat growing global economic inequality and environmental degradation. As Emeritus Professor at the University of Essex, Professor Harvey remains an involved and inspiring presence at CRESI. 

In 2017, Professor Linsey McGoey became Director of CRESI, with Dr. Katy Wheeler as Deputy Director.