Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
2024 “From criminals to slaves: ‘modern’ slavery, drugs trafficking, and the cultural politics of victimhood in
postcolonial Britain”. Current Anthropology. (published online ahead of print)
Selected by the journal as a ‘flagship’ piece, published alongside twenty responses by leading academics
2023 Koch, Insa; Williams, Patrick; Wroe, Lauren. Why county lines, why now? Racism, safeguarding, and
statecraft in contemporary Britain. Race & Class.
Covered by The Observer, “Police County Lines Strategy ‘Cruelly Targets’ Black Youth in the UK’ (November 19,
2023, by Mark Townsend).
2022 “Introduction to the state of the welfare state: advice, governance and care in settings of austerity”(with
Professor Deborah James). Ethnos 1-22.
2021 “Everyday authoritarianism: class and coercion on housing estates in neoliberal Britain” (with Davey, R). POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 44(1): 43-59
2021 “Good’ and ‘Bad’ deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic: insights from a rapid qualitative study”. (with
Simpson, N, Angland M, Bhogal JK, Bowers RE, Cannell F, Gardner K, Lohiya AG, James D, Jivraj N,
Koch I, Laws M, Lipton, J, Long, N, Veira, J, Watt, C, Whittle, C, Zidaro-Barbulesco, T, Bear, L ) British
Medical Journal (BMJ) 1(6)
2021 “From social security to state-sanctioned insecurity: how welfare reform mimics the commodification of labour through greater state intervention“. Economy & Society 50
2021 “Social polarisation at the local level: a four-town comparative study on the challenges of politicising
inequality in Britain (lead author; with Drs Mark Fransham; Sarah Cant, Jill Ebrey, Luna Glucksberg and
Professor Mike Savage). Sociology 51(1): 3-29
Winner of the Innovation/Excellence Paper Award of 2022 by the British Sociological Association
2020 “The guardians of the welfare state: universal credit, welfare control and the moral economy of frontline
work in austerity Britain”. Sociology (advanced online publication)
2019 “Turning human beings into lawyers: why anthropology matters so little to the legal curriculum'”. Journal
of Legal Anthropology 3 (2): 99-104
2018 “Towards an anthropology of global inequalities and their local manifestations: social anthropology in
2017”. Social Anthropology 26 (2): 253-26
2018 “The matriarchs of the home: unspeaking subjects in times of austerity”. Feminists@law 8 (2)
2018 “From welfare to lawfare: environmental suffering, neighbour disputes and the law in UK social housing”.
Critique of Anthropology. 38 (2): 253-268
2018 “Political economy comes home: on moral economies of housing’” (with Professor Catherine Alexander
and Professor Maja Hojer Bruun). Critique of Anthropology 38(2): 121-139
2017 “What's in a vote? Brexit beyond culture wars”. American Ethnologist 44 (2): 225-230
2017 “When Politicians fail: Zombie democracy and the anthropology of actually existing politics”.
The Sociological Review 56(1): 105-120
2017 “Moving Beyond Punitivism: Punishment, State Failure and Democracy at the Margins”. Punishment &
Society 19(2): 203-220
2016 “‘Bread and butter politics’: democratic disenchantment and everyday politics on an English council
estate”. American Ethnologist 43(2): 282-294
2015 “‘The state has replaced the man’: citizenship, women and family homes on an English council estate’.
Focaal - Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 73(13): 84-96
2014 “Everyday experiences of state betrayal on an English council estate”. Anthropology of this Century 9