Dr. Liz McFall is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Open University in the U.K.
My research is about how consumer markets are made, especially for dull, difficult or challenging products like life and health insurance and doorstep and payday loans. I was PI of the Wellcome Trust Seed Award (No. WT108386AIA) Insuring healthcare in a Digital World. This award was part of an ongoing project exploring how the convergences surrounding digital disruption and the current global wave of health care funding reforms are forging new roles for states, markets and marketing. Similar issues were explored from a historical perspective in my 2014 book Devising Consumption: cultural economies of insurance, credit and spending. Here, the connections between insurance, credit, spending and public welfare are showcased as part of an argument that the dynamic, adaptive techniques used to devise, market and sustain the consumption of dull products might usefully inform the design of public provision.