Matthew Donoghue

My current work has two strongly connected strands: The interrelations between policy and crisis (broadly conceived), and the contemporary relevance and influence of social citizenship and social rights within Europe and the EU.

Work in the former strand includes examining the development and use of socioeconomic resilience at both the household and policy levels, particularly related to economic hardship; dynamics and constructions of social cohesion in the UK and internationally, and; investigating how social and public policy not only responds, but contributes, to crises large and small. This includes understanding how discourse and ideology can be used to inoculate against, or even construct, crises and how political and policy actors might challenge these processes.

Work in the latter strand focuses on the future of social rights in (Post-) Brexit Europe, the UK’s attempts to reconfigure social citizenship via responses to Brexit and the Covid pandemic, and the relationship between the salience of social rights and political, economic and social crises, especially within the European Union.

I consider my work to sit within the tradition of interpretive and critical policy studies, which is reflected in my strong interests in discourse and ideology, and qualitative methods such as Critical Discourse Analysis, Content Analysis, Interviews, and Focus Groups amongst others. I also draw upon insights from political economy and political sociology in my work.

Potential PhD students interested in the above are more than welcome to contact me to discuss their projects.