Elizabeth Kiely
Biographic Data
| ID | 225697 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elizabeth Kiely |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Kiely |
| SIGNATURE | KIELY E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College Cork |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1459-587X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Deaths of Despair in Irish Prisons and Beyond
In the Republic of Ireland, the Prison Service is officially charged with ensuring the safety, security and dignity of the people who are imprisoned within its institutions and with creating an environment that facilitates rehabilitation. This article argues that this mission is substantively undermined by the necropolitical forces at work in and around Irish prisons. Written just as the Irish government plans to embark on the largest prison expa…
Constituting and defending ‘everyday’ rentiers
Austerity optimism
Geographers have extensively theorised the spatial politics of austerity as a form of state rescaling, which aims to redistribute power to new sites in order to roll back the welfare state. However, existing research has tended to neglect the everyday institutional geographies which effect this rescaling. A small literature has begun to examine the spatial relations which enrol institutional actors in the delivery of austerity, focussing largely …
The UK Carer's Allowance overpayments saga
The harsh treatment of carers by the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is the focus of this article. By prioritising fraud detection rather than beneficiary well-being, the administration of the Carer's Allowance (CA) payment, or more specifically the overpayments saga, has to date caused considerable social harm. Our analysis of it shows striking similarities with the Australian Centrelink's automated debt raising and recovery system, th…
Poverty trajectories and child and mother well-being outcomes in Ireland
BACKGROUND: Poverty is associated with poor outcomes, yet exposure to distinct poverty trajectories in early childhood is not well understood. OBJECTIVE: To understand the prevalence of different trajectories of household poverty and their association with mid-childhood and mother indicators of physical health and psychopathology in Ireland. METHODS: We used a nationally representative, prospective cohort (Growing Up in Ireland-Infant Cohort). Ho…
Entrepreneurship as conditionality
This paper investigates work undertaken by clients of voluntary sector mental health services in the context of austerity. While mental health geographers have often interrogated ‘work cures’, little attention has been paid to client work within traditional care-oriented services. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork in a mental health day centre threatened with closure, I demonstrate that client fundraising can become a crucial source of income w…
Unequal geographies of gender-affirming care
The study develops a novel typology of trans-specific healthcare systems in Europe. It also identifies a range of potential drivers and outcomes of geographical divergences and inequalities in trans-specific healthcare provision. Building on this typology, future comparative research should aim to link the structure of healthcare systems to outcomes for trans people. Comparative healthcare systems research must account for the distinctive forms t…
Cruel optimism” in the universities
The article illuminates how gender inequality in Ireland's higher education sector continues to be constituted at policy and at local institutional levels as a problem that requires ‘fixing the women”. It analyses two gender equality projects' discursive materials targeting female academics in Irish universities, showing that while these projects embrace elements of feminist praxis and critique, they ultimately propagate “cruel optimism”. They do…
The banality of state violence
Theorisations of state violence under austerity have been criticised for their imprecision. In response, this article introduces the concept of institutional neglect: a specific modality of structural violence. We argue that institutional neglect occurs when state services deny care to eligible clients. This is a normative claim which locates an obligation to care in the body of the state. Through case studies of two local authority-run care serv…
The Indexification of Poverty
In recent decades statistical indices have become a dominant method for measuring many features of the social world. While the resulting enumerations are regularly cited by critical human geographers, the wider political stakes of indexing the world remain unaddressed. In this article, we theorise indexification as the process through which composite statistics transform theoretical constructs into epistemic objects, and then geographically bound…
The Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Societies
From anti-immigration agendas that criminalise vulnerable populations, to the punishment of the poor and the governance of parenting, this timely book explores how diverse fields of social policy intersect more deeply than ever with crime control and, in so doing, deploy troubling strategies. The international context of this book is complemented by the inclusion of specific policy examples across the themes of work and welfare; borders and migra…
The Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Societies
From anti-terrorism agendas to the punishment of the poor and the governance of parenting, this book explores how diverse fields of social policy intersect more deeply than ever with crime control and in so doing, deploy troubling strategies
Parents displaying family consumption in Ireland
This article considers qualitative data collected from 78 parents in an Irish study on the commercialisation and sexualisation of children. It makes a distinctive contribution in showing that the framework of family display (Finch, 2007) can be productively applied to the entire field of family consumption. It shows that consumption narratives can be viewed as a tool that is used to display family – in other words, showing how family is done – to…
Stasis disguised as motion
This paper develops an account of the camouflaging of austerity as an institutional strategy. In doing so it brings together and advances geographical literatures on mental health, waiting, and austerity. Where geographers have tended to focus on moments when austerity surfaces in everyday life, this paper addresses those moments where austerity is made to recede. Presenting evidence from interviews with mental health service users/survivors, I a…
Parents’ encounters with ‘the sexualisation of childhood’
This paper draws on an Irish government-commissioned study of parents’ views about the sexualisation and commercialisation of children. We examine how parents understand ‘sexualisation’ qualitatively, through their evoking of past, present and future images of childhood. The data underlines how sexualisation becomes rationalised as something to protect against and control, not least through the restrictive surveillance of girls’ development. But …
(Neo)Liberal populism and Ireland's 'squeezed middle
Acknowledging definitional problems associated with the concept of 'populism', this article shifts the analytic gaze away from actors or politics that are conventionally characterised as populist, on to an analysis of the doing of populism by those who typically evade the populist label. Tracing the discursive construction of the 'squeezed middle' in Irish mainstream media and parliamentary debates between January 2014 and March 2019, the authors…
Centre-based supervised child-parent contact in Ireland
Slane Girl, beauty pageants and padded bras
Public and academic concern about the sexualisation of children first emerged in the early 1980s in the US, and has been traced back to the early 1990s in the UK. By contrast, public concern about child sexualisation is relatively new in Irish public discourse. In 2013 in particular, a number of “flashpoint” events occurred in Ireland, prompting both political and media reactions, which set the dominant tone of Irish discourse on this issue. This…
Pre-baby boom women's attitudes and responses to second wave feminism in Ireland
What would I be doing at home all day
This article examines the preliminary findings of an oral history project on women's working lives in three Irish counties in the period 1936-1960. By employing a feminist analysis of the narratives, the authors endeavour to investigate the extent to which the reality of married women's working lives corresponded with the rhetoric of Irish womanhood generated by political and religious discourses of the day. The analysis reveals that while the wo…
The effect of Russian versus Hebrew instructions on the reaction to social pressure of Russian-born Israeli children
Anomalous reactions to social pressure of Israeli and Soviet children raised in family versus collective settings
The banality of state violence
Theorisations of state violence under austerity have been criticised for their imprecision. In response, this article introduces the concept of institutional neglect: a specific modality of structural violence. We argue that institutional neglect occurs when state services deny care to eligible clients. This is a normative claim which locates an obligation to care in the body of the state. Through case studies of two local authority-run care serv…
Stasis disguised as motion
This paper develops an account of the camouflaging of austerity as an institutional strategy. In doing so it brings together and advances geographical literatures on mental health, waiting, and austerity. Where geographers have tended to focus on moments when austerity surfaces in everyday life, this paper addresses those moments where austerity is made to recede. Presenting evidence from interviews with mental health service users/survivors, I a…
Anomalous reactions to social pressure of Israeli and Soviet children raised in family versus collective settings
(Neo)Liberal populism and Ireland's 'squeezed middle
Acknowledging definitional problems associated with the concept of 'populism', this article shifts the analytic gaze away from actors or politics that are conventionally characterised as populist, on to an analysis of the doing of populism by those who typically evade the populist label. Tracing the discursive construction of the 'squeezed middle' in Irish mainstream media and parliamentary debates between January 2014 and March 2019, the authors…
Entrepreneurship as conditionality
This paper investigates work undertaken by clients of voluntary sector mental health services in the context of austerity. While mental health geographers have often interrogated ‘work cures’, little attention has been paid to client work within traditional care-oriented services. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork in a mental health day centre threatened with closure, I demonstrate that client fundraising can become a crucial source of income w…
Unequal geographies of gender-affirming care
The study develops a novel typology of trans-specific healthcare systems in Europe. It also identifies a range of potential drivers and outcomes of geographical divergences and inequalities in trans-specific healthcare provision. Building on this typology, future comparative research should aim to link the structure of healthcare systems to outcomes for trans people. Comparative healthcare systems research must account for the distinctive forms t…
Cruel optimism” in the universities
The article illuminates how gender inequality in Ireland's higher education sector continues to be constituted at policy and at local institutional levels as a problem that requires ‘fixing the women”. It analyses two gender equality projects' discursive materials targeting female academics in Irish universities, showing that while these projects embrace elements of feminist praxis and critique, they ultimately propagate “cruel optimism”. They do…
Centre-based supervised child-parent contact in Ireland
Slane Girl, beauty pageants and padded bras
Public and academic concern about the sexualisation of children first emerged in the early 1980s in the US, and has been traced back to the early 1990s in the UK. By contrast, public concern about child sexualisation is relatively new in Irish public discourse. In 2013 in particular, a number of “flashpoint” events occurred in Ireland, prompting both political and media reactions, which set the dominant tone of Irish discourse on this issue. This…
The effect of Russian versus Hebrew instructions on the reaction to social pressure of Russian-born Israeli children
Anomalous reactions to social pressure of Israeli and Soviet children raised in family versus collective settings
The effect of Russian versus Hebrew instructions on the reaction to social pressure of Russian-born Israeli children
What would I be doing at home all day
This article examines the preliminary findings of an oral history project on women's working lives in three Irish counties in the period 1936-1960. By employing a feminist analysis of the narratives, the authors endeavour to investigate the extent to which the reality of married women's working lives corresponded with the rhetoric of Irish womanhood generated by political and religious discourses of the day. The analysis reveals that while the wo…
Pre-baby boom women's attitudes and responses to second wave feminism in Ireland
Slane Girl, beauty pageants and padded bras
Public and academic concern about the sexualisation of children first emerged in the early 1980s in the US, and has been traced back to the early 1990s in the UK. By contrast, public concern about child sexualisation is relatively new in Irish public discourse. In 2013 in particular, a number of “flashpoint” events occurred in Ireland, prompting both political and media reactions, which set the dominant tone of Irish discourse on this issue. This…
Centre-based supervised child-parent contact in Ireland
Parents’ encounters with ‘the sexualisation of childhood’
This paper draws on an Irish government-commissioned study of parents’ views about the sexualisation and commercialisation of children. We examine how parents understand ‘sexualisation’ qualitatively, through their evoking of past, present and future images of childhood. The data underlines how sexualisation becomes rationalised as something to protect against and control, not least through the restrictive surveillance of girls’ development. But …
(Neo)Liberal populism and Ireland's 'squeezed middle
Acknowledging definitional problems associated with the concept of 'populism', this article shifts the analytic gaze away from actors or politics that are conventionally characterised as populist, on to an analysis of the doing of populism by those who typically evade the populist label. Tracing the discursive construction of the 'squeezed middle' in Irish mainstream media and parliamentary debates between January 2014 and March 2019, the authors…
The Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Societies
From anti-immigration agendas that criminalise vulnerable populations, to the punishment of the poor and the governance of parenting, this timely book explores how diverse fields of social policy intersect more deeply than ever with crime control and, in so doing, deploy troubling strategies. The international context of this book is complemented by the inclusion of specific policy examples across the themes of work and welfare; borders and migra…
The Criminalisation of Social Policy in Neoliberal Societies
From anti-terrorism agendas to the punishment of the poor and the governance of parenting, this book explores how diverse fields of social policy intersect more deeply than ever with crime control and in so doing, deploy troubling strategies
Parents displaying family consumption in Ireland
This article considers qualitative data collected from 78 parents in an Irish study on the commercialisation and sexualisation of children. It makes a distinctive contribution in showing that the framework of family display (Finch, 2007) can be productively applied to the entire field of family consumption. It shows that consumption narratives can be viewed as a tool that is used to display family – in other words, showing how family is done – to…
Stasis disguised as motion
This paper develops an account of the camouflaging of austerity as an institutional strategy. In doing so it brings together and advances geographical literatures on mental health, waiting, and austerity. Where geographers have tended to focus on moments when austerity surfaces in everyday life, this paper addresses those moments where austerity is made to recede. Presenting evidence from interviews with mental health service users/survivors, I a…
Cruel optimism” in the universities
The article illuminates how gender inequality in Ireland's higher education sector continues to be constituted at policy and at local institutional levels as a problem that requires ‘fixing the women”. It analyses two gender equality projects' discursive materials targeting female academics in Irish universities, showing that while these projects embrace elements of feminist praxis and critique, they ultimately propagate “cruel optimism”. They do…
The banality of state violence
Theorisations of state violence under austerity have been criticised for their imprecision. In response, this article introduces the concept of institutional neglect: a specific modality of structural violence. We argue that institutional neglect occurs when state services deny care to eligible clients. This is a normative claim which locates an obligation to care in the body of the state. Through case studies of two local authority-run care serv…
The Indexification of Poverty
In recent decades statistical indices have become a dominant method for measuring many features of the social world. While the resulting enumerations are regularly cited by critical human geographers, the wider political stakes of indexing the world remain unaddressed. In this article, we theorise indexification as the process through which composite statistics transform theoretical constructs into epistemic objects, and then geographically bound…
Poverty trajectories and child and mother well-being outcomes in Ireland
BACKGROUND: Poverty is associated with poor outcomes, yet exposure to distinct poverty trajectories in early childhood is not well understood. OBJECTIVE: To understand the prevalence of different trajectories of household poverty and their association with mid-childhood and mother indicators of physical health and psychopathology in Ireland. METHODS: We used a nationally representative, prospective cohort (Growing Up in Ireland-Infant Cohort). Ho…
Entrepreneurship as conditionality
This paper investigates work undertaken by clients of voluntary sector mental health services in the context of austerity. While mental health geographers have often interrogated ‘work cures’, little attention has been paid to client work within traditional care-oriented services. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork in a mental health day centre threatened with closure, I demonstrate that client fundraising can become a crucial source of income w…
Unequal geographies of gender-affirming care
The study develops a novel typology of trans-specific healthcare systems in Europe. It also identifies a range of potential drivers and outcomes of geographical divergences and inequalities in trans-specific healthcare provision. Building on this typology, future comparative research should aim to link the structure of healthcare systems to outcomes for trans people. Comparative healthcare systems research must account for the distinctive forms t…
Constituting and defending ‘everyday’ rentiers
Austerity optimism
Geographers have extensively theorised the spatial politics of austerity as a form of state rescaling, which aims to redistribute power to new sites in order to roll back the welfare state. However, existing research has tended to neglect the everyday institutional geographies which effect this rescaling. A small literature has begun to examine the spatial relations which enrol institutional actors in the delivery of austerity, focussing largely …
The UK Carer's Allowance overpayments saga
The harsh treatment of carers by the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is the focus of this article. By prioritising fraud detection rather than beneficiary well-being, the administration of the Carer's Allowance (CA) payment, or more specifically the overpayments saga, has to date caused considerable social harm. Our analysis of it shows striking similarities with the Australian Centrelink's automated debt raising and recovery system, th…
Deaths of Despair in Irish Prisons and Beyond
In the Republic of Ireland, the Prison Service is officially charged with ensuring the safety, security and dignity of the people who are imprisoned within its institutions and with creating an environment that facilitates rehabilitation. This article argues that this mission is substantively undermined by the necropolitical forces at work in and around Irish prisons. Written just as the Irish government plans to embark on the largest prison expa…
Political science (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Irish (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works)