Dr. Martyn Egan

I took my PhD at the European University Institute, Florence, where I also worked as a Research Associate at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. Prior to working in academia I spent several years as a research analyst in the Middle East.

  Comparative Sociology   Political Economy   Social Inequalities   Social Theory

I am perhaps unusual as a social scientist in being equally interested in theoretical and empirical research. My substantive interests straddle the disciplinary boundaries between political economy and political sociology, and lie primarily in the field of social reproduction and inequality. I study these using primarily Bourdieusian theoretical and methodological approaches, including Geometric Data Analysis, Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Principal Components Analysis. I use these methods to uncover and explore latent structures or dimensions in social space, such as forms of capital or modes of reproduction. My current research in this area is focussed on the comparative study of social reproduction across countries. I am investigating whether countries can be grouped into "regimes" of reproduction, according to similarities in practices, perceptions and institutional configurations. This agenda builds on my PhD research, which focussed on the particular case of social reproduction in Lebanon through the phenomenon of wasta (connections), using primarily qualitative methods. As well as social reproduction, I also have an interest in the political economy of accumulation, which I study from a Marxist/Gramscian perspective. A recent publication in this area focussed on the housing crisis in Ireland, and sought to link this to Ireland's specific accumulation regime, which is specialised in facilitating base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) among multi-national corporations. Finally, I also have an interest in the political economy of generative AI, which I again analyse from a Marxist perspective. A paper currently awaiting publication draws on Jean Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum to modify Marx's theory of the commodity fetish.