Rate My Professor Martijn Konings

Martijn Konings is Professor of Political Economy and Social Theory in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney, affiliated with the Discipline of Political Economy in the School of Social and Political Sciences. He earned his PhD from York University in Toronto, Canada, and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Amsterdam. Konings joined the University of Sydney as a Lecturer in Political Economy and the United States Studies Centre, advancing to his current professorial role. He has served as Chair of the Department of Political Economy and as Associate Dean (Research). Additionally, he is Co-Director of the Contemporary Inequalities Centre, focusing on new forms of inequality in contemporary societies.

Konings' academic interests center on the intersection of political economy and social theory, exploring neoliberal reason, financialization, leverage, the asset economy, and the emotional logics of capitalism. His major publications include The Development of American Finance (Cambridge University Press, 2011), The Emotional Logic of Capitalism: What Progressives Have Missed (Stanford University Press, 2015), which was awarded the Suzanne M. & Howard B. Owens Prize by the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University, Capital and Time: For a New Critique of Neoliberal Reason (Stanford University Press, 2018), The Asset Economy, co-authored with Lisa Adkins and Melinda Cooper (Polity Press, 2020), and The Bailout State: Why Governments Rescue Banks, Not People (Polity Press, 2024). He has received significant research funding from the Australian Research Council, including a Future Fellowship (FT240100089) in 2024 for his project on political economy and social theory, and an earlier Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE120100213). Konings has contributed to key edited volumes, such as the SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism (2018, co-edited with Damien Cahill, Melinda Cooper, and David Primrose), and maintains an active publication record in leading journals. His scholarship influences debates on how asset ownership shapes 21st-century class dynamics and the social implications of financial bailouts and austerity.