Objective
This project will develop the applicant into a leader in the topic of social and material influences on financial risk-taking in the reinsurance industry. The reinsurance sector is dominated by European players that hold 64% of the industry’s global market share. Hence, in this sector, Europe must establish globalisation on its own terms, developing thought leaders to take their place on the world stage. The fellow has a unique dataset on this industry, of unparalleled scale and depth, comprising audio and video ethnography of live trading in 23 firms across the London, continental Europe and Bermuda markets. This dataset can be used to generate important interdisciplinary advances in behavioural theories of risk. However, there are few techniques for robust analysis of video data, requiring expanded skills and methodological innovation. She will therefore work with an interdisciplinary team of world-leading scholars in economic sociology, technology studies and ethnography at a top US university, Cornell, in order to generate the following results:
1. A book and academic papers built upon interdisciplinary frameworks at the intersection of economic sociology, technology studies and ethnography, which advance behavioural theories of risk-taking beyond current economics-based approaches.
2. Better understanding of how cultural variation in risk-trading practices shapes financial markets, which counteracts the Anglo-American assumptions that dominate existing theory.
3. Methodological innovation in ethnography, which requires a step change to meet the opportunities afforded by the increasing availability of portable digital video technology and home analysis software
4. Development of a rising European scholar into a thought leader on behavioural approaches to financial risk management, who comments knowledgably on the European reinsurance sector, and is internationally acknowledged for innovative methodological approaches to these important global issues.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IOF
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
MC-IOF - International Outgoing Fellowships (IOF)Coordinator
EC1V 0HB London
United Kingdom