skip to content

Department of Social Anthropology

 

Biography

I am a social anthropologist with an interest in activism, politics, subjectivity, housing, art, and inequality. My work has focused on the effects of the 2008 recession and housing crisis on young people’s employment and housing opportunities in the Republic of Ireland, as well as the relationship between democratic disenchantment and a range of social movements - especially the campaign to the Repeal the 8th amendment and legalise abortion, and ongoing campaigns for social and affordable housing. More recently, I have also explored the relationship between the housing crisis, anti-austerity activism after 2008, and the rising popularity of the pro-unification and nationalist party Sinn Féin, north and south of the Irish border. 

I am currently a Fellow, College Lecturer and Director of Studies in Human, Social & Political Sciences (HSPS) at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Prior to this, I held posts as the Chandaria Teaching Associate at Fitzwilliam College, an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow and a Teaching Associate and Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge. From 2021-2024, I also held a post as a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent. I earned my PhD and MPhil at the University of Cambridge and my BA in Anthropology at Yale University, where I specialised in biological and genetic anthropology in a four-field department.

 

Research

My research is concerned with activism and the political subject, as well as with ethnographic understandings of freedom, power and the state. My doctoral work focused on a group of artists and activists in Dublin critical of gentrification, urban renewal, and the influx of especially American Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the Irish state post-recession. I examined how they mobilise the word “neoliberalism” as a contemporary political claim expressing a lack of trust in liberal democratic governance, as well as the consequences of this ethnographic case for anthropological approaches to politics and critique. 

An ESRC-funded postdoctoral research project then examined allegiances to the Irish political party, Sinn Féin among young leftist voters and activists. Building on doctoral fieldwork in and around social housing regenerations in Dublin, I explored how the housing crisis made it possible for young middle-class leftists and working-class residents in gentrifying neighbourhoods to see one another as tentative allies and eventually to rally around the party, contributing significantly to Sinn Féin's success in the 2020 General Election.

Recent work examines why this alliance is now more fragile, focusing on the role of anti-immigrant agitation and the ongoing housing crisis in Ireland. These topics are unpacked in my monograph - entitled 'Critiquing Neoliberalism: Art and Activism in Post-Recession Dublin’ - which traces a through line from a range of anti-austerity and left-wing activist movements post-2008 to the ongoing housing crisis and support for Sinn Féin. Elsewhere, my work advocates for applying anthropological tools and questions to traditional political theoretical debates and liberal democratic institutions. For instance, forthcoming political and legal anthropological work on major abortion rights decisions in the US versus Ireland contrasts forms of public reasoning in the US Supreme Court versus the Irish Citizens' Assembly. 

Future research will focus on the relationship between austerity and nationalism in European and American liberal democratic contexts, as well as the intersection between political movements and the shifting characteristics of contemporary capitalism. I am particularly interested in the relationship between neoliberalism, nationalism, populism and the Left, as well as how left-wing political parties and movements interact with right-wing actors in the region. Throughout, I am also interested in how the left-right distinction is understood ethnographically, and in ways that interrupt our expectations of ‘conservative’ versus ‘progressive’ political ideologies. 

Previously, my research interests were focused on minority language politics and the aesthetics of traditional (sean-nós) singing in the west of Ireland and in the Irish diaspora in London. Prior to my Social Anthropology degrees (MPhil, PhD) at Cambridge, I completed my liberal arts BA with a major in four-field Anthropology at Yale University, and a concentration in linguistic and biological anthropology. I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on the evolutionary genetics of colour vision in owl monkeys (Aotus) and conducted research on the impact of taxonomic designations of biodiversity among treeshrews (Scandentia) in the Malay Peninsula. The results of both projects have been published in Frontiers in Zoology, the Journal of Mammalogy, and the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.

(neo)liberalism; liberal democracy; critique; art; activism; capitalism; socialism; imperialism; urban development; (ethno-)nationalism; labour; class; gender; abortion and reproductive health

Publications

Book

Morningstar, N. (2025) Critiquing Neoliberalism: Art and Activism in Post-Recession Dublin. Monograph for Berghahn Wyse Series.

 

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Morningstar, N. (2025) Abortion and the Anthropology of Life: Abortion Rights Discourse in the US and Ireland. For 2025 Special Issue, ‘Beyond Public Reason,’ accepted by The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Eds. C. Boutieri, S. Everett, E. Weiss.

Morningstar, N. (2024) Critique Refigured: Art, Activism and Politics in Post-Recession Dublin. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 30(3). 

Morningstar, N. (2022) Everyone’s an artist?: Class, precarity, and the distribution of creative labor. Focaal1(aop), 1-14.

Morningstar, N. (2021). Bad parrhesia: the limits of cynicism in the public sphere. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale29(2), 437-452.

Morningstar, N., (2020) Neoliberalism Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Doi: 10.29164/20neolib

Morningstar, N. C. (2020) Performing Futility: Post-Truth and the Politics of Insincerity. Anthropological Theory Commons.

 

Book Chapters

Morningstar, N. (2025) ‘Dissent, Hierarchy, and Value Creation: Liberalism and the Problem of Critique.’ In Freedoms of Speech: Anthropological Perspective on Language, Ethics, and Power, Eds. M. Candea, T. Fedirko, P. Heywood, and F. Wright. University of Toronto Press.

 

Reviews

Morningstar, N. (2024) From rebellion to censorship: power, freedom, and silicon values. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 30: 500-501.

Morningstar, N. (2023) Relations of dissent: politics, ethics, and the moral individual. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute29(3), 692-694.

 

Teaching and Supervisions

Teaching: 

Undergraduate Supervision

SAN1 – Social Anthropology: The Comparative Perspective

SAN3 - Anthropological theory and methods

SAN6 – Power, economy and social transformation

SAN7 – Ethnographic Methods and Writing

Dissertations

Undergraduate Lecturing

SAN1 – Social Anthropology: The Comparative Perspective

SAN3 – Anthropological theory and methods

Postgraduate Lecturing

MP4: Research Design Workshops

Postgraduate Supervision 

Accepting PhD students 

Affiliated Lecturer
Fellow, College Lecturer & Director of Studies, Fitzwilliam College
Office hours: appointment by email 

Contact Details

Email address: 
Takes PhD students

Affiliations