Rethinking household debt, social reproduction, and subordinate financialization across the Global South, with a focus on South Africa.
Lena is a PhD student in Development Economics at SOAS, University of London, where her work explores the gendered nature of household debt in the Global South — with a particular focus on South Africa.
She contributes to a heterodox reading of our economic system by tracing how financial capitalism shapes material realities in the Global South, linking theories of subordinate financialization with social reproduction frameworks.
Lena is dedicated to unpacking the real-life complexities behind well-established categories in economics — households, debt, networks — drawing on anthropology, political economy, gender studies, and economics in equal measure.
Approaches that put care, labour, and life-making at the centre of the economy.
Challenging the gendered blind spots of mainstream economic theory.
How global finance reshapes peripheral economies and everyday lives.
Ethnographic attention to debt, networks, and household practices.
A study of how debt is lived, negotiated, and reproduced in everyday life — and what that tells us about the global financial order.
Supervised by Dr Sara Stevano · Department of Economics, SOAS
Researching the gendered nature of household debt in South Africa.
Working on the political economy of climate change policies.
Background research, client engagements, and internal communication.
Graduate training in heterodox political economy.
Plus active organising with the German Network for Pluralist Economics — summer schools and roundtables.
For collaborations, conversations, or coffee in Russell Square:
695261@soas.ac.uk