As our money increasingly takes the form of plastic cards and mobile phones, rather than cash, new questions are being posed about the connections between money, self and identity. Is money becoming de-anonymised, and if so, should we care? Is the decline of cash a moment of renewal in our relationship with money, or a threat to the freedom that has been central to its use? This panel will discuss changing attitudes towards money and the affect it can have, in its many different guises, on our identity.
David Birch (@dgwbirch) is an internationally-recognised thought leader in digital money and digital identity. He is a Director of Consult Hyperion, the technical and strategic consultancy that specialises in electronic transactions. Here he provides consultancy support to clients around the world, including all of the leading payment brands, major telecommunications providers, governments bodies and international organisations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Nigel Dodd (@nigelbdodd) is Professor in the Sociology Department at the LSE. Nigel’s main interests are in the sociology of money, economic sociology and classical and contemporary social thought. He is author of The Sociology of Money and Social Theory and Modernity (both published by Polity Press). His new book, The Social Life of Money, was published by Princeton University Press in September 2014.
Tom Hockenhull is a curator at the British Museum, responsible for the modern money collection and editor of Symbols of Power: Ten Coins that Changed the World.
Nicky Marsh works in the English Department at the University of Southampton. She works on late 20th and 21st century British and American literatures, theories of gender, postmodernism, poetics and economics. Her published works include Money, Finance andSpeculation in Contemporary British Fiction, Democracy in US Women’s Poetry and the edited collection Literature and Globalization. She is also the co-curator of the exhibition Show Me the Money: the Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present, which is touring through 2014-15.
Izabella Kaminska (@izakaminska) is a reporter for FT Alphaville.
The Department of Sociology at LSE (@LSEsociology) was established in 1904 and remains committed to top quality teaching and leading research and scholarship today.
This event forms part of the LSE Space for Thought Literary Festival 2015, taking place from Monday 23 - Saturday 28 February 2015, with the theme 'Foundations'.
Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #LSElitfest
Podcast
A podcast of this event is available to download from "My Purse, My Person": money and identity
Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.