Christian joined International Political Economy and the School of Politics and Economics in 2021.

He is a recipient of a +3 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (LISS) Studentship award Pathway 13: Politics, Public Policy & Governance (PPPG), Sub-pathway A. Political, Legal & Social Theory

He holds the degrees BA (Hons) Philosophy and Politics from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and MA Social and Political Thought from the University of Sussex.

Prior to joining Kings and the PhD in International Political Economy Research, he was an Independent scholar and researcher and taught precariously on short term contracts at different universities. He has published articles and book chapters in numerous peer-reviewed journals and edited collections, as well as presenting papers at conferences, symposia and workshops. 

Research interests

Philosophy, social theory, critical theory in particular Marx and the first generation Frankfurt School, unorthodox and non-doctrinaire Marxism; critique of political economy and international political economy especially as this is focused on the changing terms of social reproduction, agency and the social subject in globalised class society.

Doctoral research

The thesis and dissertation to be submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy have the working title ‘Flexible Subjects: A Contemporary Critical Theory of ‘Flexibility’/’Precarity’. This aims to develop a critical theory of the concept of ‘flexibility’ and the social relations this ideological concept seeks to veil and erroneously explain and justify: precarity and contingency.

The study investigates the reality of ‘flexibility’/precarity in the contemporary UK: in a society in which work is the primary means of social reproduction, ‘flexible subjects’ are made to accept their own condition of indefinite insecurity and servitude willingly as if it were their own making, and as if they had control over those same conditions when it is not and they do not, but must accept this at any cost.

This research also critically explores the two concepts’ discursive substance with a substantial empirical chapter of interviews with base union organisers in the ‘gig economy’. The differing forms ‘flexibility’/’precarity’ can be said to take - both employed and underemployed or unemployed - is also examined in some detail, such as bogus ‘self-employment’, zero-hours contracts and workfare in the UK in the early-2020s.

PhD supervisors

Dr Lucia Pradella and Prof Alex Callinicos

Latest research

Garland, C. (forthcoming 2022) Book Chapter ‘“Changing Behaviour”: the Hierarchical and Bureaucratic Imperative of Instrumental Reason in the Corporatized University Reply to Justin Cruickshank The Feudal University in the Age of Gaming the System in The Social Production of Knowledge in a Neoliberal Age: Debating the Challenges facing Higher Education eds. Collier, J & Cruickshank, J. (London: Rowman & Littlefield International)

Garland C. (forthcoming 2021) Book Chapter ‘Turning Sense into Nonsense and Nonsense into Sense: Critical Theory to Refuse the Fallacy of Populism’ in Marcuse and Critical Theory in Dark Times: The Dialectics of Liberation under Neoliberalism (London & New York: Palgrave Macmillan)

Garland, C. (2019) ‘Universal Catastrophe - the ongoing crisis that is Universal Credit and welfare ‘conditionality’ in Discover Society DS73

https://discoversociety.org/2019/10/02/universal-catastrophe-the-ongoing-crisis-that-is-universal-credit-and-welfare-conditionality/

Garland, C. (2019) ‘Instead of the extensive amount of labour, its intensive amount increased: bogus ‘self-employment’ in the contemporary UK’ in UnMediated (Journal of Politics and Communication) Issue 2.0 ‘Disruption’

Full CV here: https://kcl.academia.edu/ChristianGarland