Professor Rebecca Cassidy FBA

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King's College
  • William Wyse Professor
Professor Rebecca Cassidy FBA

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About

I'm a social anthropologist interested in ideas about what is 'natural' and how they are curated, refined, reproduced, whether that is through the bodies and pedigrees of elite animals and fruits, or through 'self-help' leaflets for so-called 'problem gamblers'. In my work I ask how particular ways of thinking about the world become powerful.

Research

I'm currently working on a project about growing fruit, supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship. In the past I have worked on horseracing, and gambling. I'm interested in multispecies relations, political ecology, uncertainty, gender, kinship, class, inequality, public anthropology and policy.

My most recent book, Vicious Games (Pluto 2020), explored the gambling industry's affinity with capitalism and is based on over a decade of fieldwork with gambling businesses around the world. I've also co-written a report about conflicts of interest in gambling research called Fair Game (2014). A lot of gambling research has focused on the consumption of gambling by individuals who are represented as vulnerable or flawed in some shared way. My approach has been to focus instead on the production of dangerous products and flawed policies by corporations and governments.

My work in gambling developed from my interest in horseracing. I've written two monographs, Sport of Kings (2002) and Horse People (2007), about thoroughbred breeding and racing in Newmarket and Kentucky, respectively. Using fieldwork on studs and race tracks I've shown how horseracing and thoroughbred breeding depend on inequalities of class and gender that are naturalised in the day to day lives of racehorses, stable workers, jockeys, and trainers.

I've also edited collections of essays, with Molly Mullin, on the idea of domestication (Where the Wild Things are Now, 2007) with Claire Loussouarn and Andrea Pisac on new approaches to gambling research (Qualitative Research in Gambling, 2013) and about horseracing (Cassidy 2013).

My work on gambling has informed public debate about gambling policy in the UK and been widely reported in the media including The Daily Mail, Guardian, The New Statesman, The New York Times, Nature, and The New Scientist. The Labour Party used my work to launch a review of gambling and changes in policy including the creation of a mandatory levy to fund research and a ban on gambling advertising on footballer's shirts.

You can listen to me being interviewed on Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4, about gambling, masculinity in betting shops, and horseracing.

 

Publications

Books

Edited Books

Book Sections

Articles

Reports

Teaching and supervision

  • SAN7g

  • Writing Up seminar

     

Research supervision

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