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Dr Mary Robertson

Mary

Lecturer in Business Transitions and Sustainability

Email: mary.robertson@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

Roles:

  • Lecturer in Business Transitions and Sustainability

Biography:

Mary Robertson’s career spans academia and policy. Her research is broadly concerned with processes of economic restructuring and transition. She uses the Systems of Provision approach to explore the material, cultural and political determinants of economic restructuring in relation to particular commodities and sectors, operationalised by a concern with how system forces and tendencies manifest and unfold in particular contexts and conjunctures. For example, one research strand looks at how broad patterns of financialisation and rent capture have shaped the restructuring of the housing industry, in ways that are differentiated across time and place. Another research strand, which builds on her policy work, concerns the relationship between business and state in shaping sustainability transitions.

Mary has held a number of roles in economic and business policy, including for the Trades Union Congress, the Labour Party, the Mayor of London's Office, the Greater London Authority and Tower Hamlets council.

Mary holds a PhD and MSc in Economics from SOAS University, London, an MA in Philosophy and Economics from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford. 

Teaching

Published textbooks:

Robertson, M. ‘How and why are things consumed?’ in Deane, K. and E. Van Waeyenberge (2020) ‘Recharting the History of Economic Thought,’  Red Globe Press/MacMillan Education Ltd

Research

Research Interests:

Dr Robertson's main interests lie in: Housing, rent, political economy, climate change, systems of provision, financialisation. 

Publications

  • Robertson, M. (2024). State, capital and nation in Green New Deal Politics: lessons from the British Labour Party’s 2019 programme. New Political Economy, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2024.2405540
  • Robertson, M. (2024). Rent and financialisation as concrete totality: The case for provisioning approaches as method of abstraction. Progress in Human Geography, 48(1), 18-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325231214453
  • Bayliss, K., Fine, B., Robertson, M., & Saad-Filho, A. (2024). Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated: The persistence of neoliberalism in Britain. European Journal of Social Theory, 27(4), 540-560. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241241800
  • Robertson, M. (2023). Reform versus Transformation: Reflections on the Legacy of Corbynism’s Economic Programme. Historical Materialism, 31(3), 3-32. https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206x-bja10024
  • Bayliss, K., B. Fine and M. Robertson (eds) (2019) Material Cultures of Financialisation, Routledge
  • Bayliss, K., B. Fine and M. Robertson ‘The systems of provision approach to understanding consumption’ in Kravets, O., P. Maclaran, S. Miles and A. Venkatesh (eds) (2018) The SAGE Handbook of Consumer Culture, SAGE Publications Ltd
  • Bayliss, K., B. Fine and M. Robertson (2017) Introduction to special issue on the material cultures of financialisation, New Political Economy, 22:4, 355-370
  • Mary Robertson (2017) (De)constructing the financialised culture of owner-occupation in the UK, with the aid of the 10Cs, New Political Economy, 22:4, 398-409
  • Robertson, M. (2017) ‘The Great British Housing Crisis’, Capital and Class, 41:2, 1-21

Supervision

Available to supervise PhDs in housing and financialisation, rent theory, Marxist political economy, Systems of Provision, Green New Deals/transformative policy debates.

Public Engagement

Member of the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy and Reteaching Economics.

Former Head of Economic Policy for the Labour Party (2016-20); Senior Policy Officer for Public Services at the Trades Union Congress (2020-21)

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