Eoin Flaherty

Before arriving at Maynooth, I spent two years as Lecturer in Sociology at Queen's University Belfast, and two years as Assistant Professor in Sociology at University College Dublin. I am interested in some basic questions of collective behavior: how are patterns of inequality formed and maintained, and how do they change over time? I study these processes over time and space, with a particular focus on income inequality during the late 20th/early 21st century, and instances of famine during the 19th century (mainly Ireland for now). I am also interested in how human societies have formed systems of cooperation and managed resources collectively, and whether such systems were more resilient to environmental stress.

My current projects include:

"Who/what are the rentiers? Renting, incomes, and tenure in ‘post-home ownership’ Ireland", a ten-year study of property-related and capital incomes in Irish housholds, pre and post-crisis (2005-2015), using data from the EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions (with Dr. Michael Byrne, University College Dublin)

"Common-pool resource governance and food security", a project which uses geographically weighted regression to study the spatial distribution of distress rates during the Great Irish Famine (1845-1852), and to explore the moderating role of collective tenure.

"Capital, labour, and inequality: why a two-class model fits", a conceptual work drawing together research on various strands of income inequality, including top incomes, labour's share of national income, and rentier incomes. In doing so, it considers the under-theorisation of both capitalism and class in modern inequality studies, and asks whether thinking in terms of 'capital and labour' and their respective power resources, makes more sense as an explanation of rising inequality.