Engaging with Multiple Disciplines in the Study of Politics: Opportunities and Challenges

Robin Jervis'  research looks at the nature of work under modern liberal capitalism, and how institutions can create an environment conducive to better work, building on the labour process literature, Marxist alienation theory and Haagh's concept of developmental freedom. In particular, Robin is interested in the workers co-operative as a set of institutions which could exist within liberal market economies to reform capitalist property relations, and the potential systemic barriers that co-operatives face in such economies. His work, although chiefly in politics, crosses several disciplines, chiefly economics and sociology which offer radically different approaches to research and presentation of ideas, with a highly mathematical approach dominating the former, and a more qualitative approach in the latter. Recently he presented his  theoretical findings on property rights and work at a conference in Nottingham. Robin has a background in political economy, with a BA in Politics and Economics and an MA in PPE: Politics and Development, from York. He is currently in the third year (part time) of his Ph.D

Juliana Bidadanure  started a PhD in the School of Politics, Economics and Philosophy at the University of York in 2011. She writes within the field of political philosophy and is particularly interested in questions of social justice in general, and in theories of equality in particular. She currently focuses on questions of justice between age groups. She works on identifying principles of justice for age groups' institutions and on the question of what it means for people of different ages to stand as equal. She is also very interested in the literature on Universal Basic Income and is currently working on providing a defence of the idea of a universal basic income for young people. Juliana has presented her work on many occasions in the UK, Belgium, Denmark and in the US. In 2012, Juliana visited the Hoover chair in Economic and Social Ethics at the Université Catholique de Louvain on a three month doctoral visit. She is currently organising an international conference on intergenerational justice in York with the Intergenerational Foundation (http://www.if.org.uk/york-conference-2013)

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