Gemma John and Annabel Pinker joined CRESC in January and will be contributing to the Topologies of Social Change research theme.

Dr John's previous work focused on Freedom of Information legislation in Scotland and explored the particular ideal of the person that underpinned it.  At CRESC she will be developing a new research project focussing on the implications of the Big Society for ‘responsibility’.  Building on her analysis of personhood as reflected in people’s behaviour under Freedom of Information, her new project will explore the material form of persons as they engage with each other in the context of the Big Society and aims to reveal some (un)expected consequences of its implementation.

Dr Pinker's research is concerned with  utopianism, development, and missionary practices in the central Ecuadorian Andes. She is interested in addressing the novel possibilities for re-thinking the state by studying recent trends towards (re)constituting and strengthening decentralised forms of government in the Andes. She joins CRESC as a postdoctoral researcher working with Professor Penny Harvey and Professor Deborah Poole (Johns Hopkins University) on an ACLS project called Unsettling the State: Law, Engineering and Regional Government in Cusco, Peru.