Lead supervisor:
Dr Elisa Wynne-Hughes 
Other supervisor(s):
- Prof Victoria Basham
Start date: October 2025
Award: General
Subject Pathway:
Politics, International Relations and Global Language Based Area Studies
Thematic Cluster:
Rights and Governance Cluster
It’s the End of the World as We Know It!: Conceptualising the ‘death’ of neoliberalism through a feminist analysis of UK/US TV shows from 2016-present
My PhD explores the gendered discourses of ‘post-neoliberalism’/right-wing authoritarianism, as they are represented and made commonsensical in UK and US Breakfast/Morning Television Shows. I am particularly keen to interrogate whether right-wing norms and discourses are being mainstreamed in these programs, and if this reflects a crisis of neoliberal ideology.
In this sense, I conceptualise neoliberalism not only as an economic practice and political doctrine (see: Laruffa 2024), but also as a sociocultural phenomenon (see: Lerch et al. 2022).
Furthermore, I focus on UK and US media contexts because they provide useful case studies for analysing ‘post-neoliberal’ political environments in lieu of Brexit and the dual presidential elections of Donald Trump (Davies and Gane 2021).
Using discourse analysis, I will compare and contrast UK and US breakfast/morning shows from 2016-present, exploring how gender is constructed and negotiated in these shows and whether these discourses have become increasingly anti-feminist, reactionary and/or anti-gender.
As such, this investigation will help me to answer the following questions:
- Is the state of world politics presently becoming ‘post-neoliberal’?
- Are breakfast/morning TV shows contributing to the mainstreaming of right-wing ideologies and discourses?
- How is gender negotiated on television in an increasingly right-wing, nationalist context? Are these ideas necessarily ‘post-neoliberal’ or are they neoliberal in origin?
Bibliography
Davies, W. and Gane, N. 2021. Post-Neoliberalism? An Introduction. Theory, Culture & Society 38(6), pp. 3-28. doi:10.1177/02632764211036722
Laruffa, F. 2024. Making Sense of (Post)Neoliberalism. Politics & Society 52(4), pp. 586-629. doi:10.1177/00323292231193805
Lerch, J. Bromley, P. and Meyer, J. 2022. Global Neoliberalism as a Cultural Order and Its Expansive Educational Effects. International Journal of Sociology 52(2), pp. 97-127. doi:10.1080/00207659.2021.2015665