Debt and Debt Relief

Location
JB Priestley Room Staff House
Dates
Wednesday 20 September 2017 (09:00-16:30)
Contact

For more information about this workshop, please email Lauren Rawlins

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WORKSHOP LEADER: Dr Katharina Möser, University of Birmingham, and Dr Samuel Kirwan, University of Warwick. 

This workshop aims to bring together academics from diverse research fields (including law, sociology, social policy and social work, political economy, anthropology, geography, education and management) to address questions relating to debt and personal insolvency law with a view to establishing collaborative research networks and developing interdisciplinary research agendas.

While there is a rich field of debt research across several interlinked disciplines, debt relief options for consumers are currently discussed as a minor aspect of insolvency law, a field which deals primarily with corporate insolvency law. We believe that significant progress in understanding can be gained by placing personal insolvency within a wider disciplinary and comparative framework. Only a long-term interdisciplinary agenda will allow a proper appraisal of the personal insolvency law landscape in England and Wales, the only viable starting point for a comprehensive review of this area of law.

As a first step the workshop seeks to explore the link between low incomes, over-indebtedness and legal forms of debt relief. This will enable us to analyse the legal consequences of over-indebtedness taking account of broader issues, such as the causes and consequences of over-indebtedness, moral economies of shame and guilt, social and financial exclusion, availability and practices of debt advice, the stigma associated with personal insolvency and poverty in general and the long-term effects of debt relief. Also, it would enable us to situate them in the context of wider economic theories and political doctrines, such as privatisation, financialization and neo-liberalism.