Staff profile

Carla Ibled’s research emerges from a critical engagement with contemporary discourses of neoliberalism. She examines the ways economic theories function simultaneously as economic doctrines and mobilising affective infrastructures, showing how economics is practiced and imagined today, in the work of economists, economic thinkers, in popular culture and in everyday life. Carla’s work is interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from neoliberalism studies, critical political theory, cultural political economy and cultural studies.

Her current work is informed by three main themes. Firstly, her research centres on the close and critical analysis of key texts of neoliberal economic theory, paying attention to the affective currents structuring their conceptualisations of themes like mortality, poverty and race. Secondly, Carla is interested in how neoliberal ideas and representations have been mobilised in the context of the new (outer) space race. Lastly, she has written work on the Silicon Valley ideology and techno-fascism. She is specifically interested in the ways Silicon Valley capitalists mobilise certain economic representations when attempting to reshape social and political orders globally.

Carla joined the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University in 2025. Prior to that, she was SeNSS/ESRC post-doctoral research fellow at the University of East Anglia, as well as Lecturer in political theory and international relations at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she earned her PhD in 2021.

 

• Neoliberalism
• Digital capitalism
• Outer space capitalism
• Political economy of health
• Cultural economy
• Biopolitics
• Psychoanalysis

Chapter in book

• Ad Astra: New Space Corporate Lobbies, Neoliberal Advocacy Networks, and the Commercialization of Space
  
  Ibled, C. (in press). Ad Astra: New Space Corporate Lobbies, Neoliberal Advocacy Networks, and the Commercialization of Space. In Neoliberalism and the Capitalists. Springer Nature (Palgrave Macmillan).

Journal Article

• A ‘Limitless Frontier’? Neoliberalism, Silicon Valley and the Commercialization of Space
  
  Ibled, C. (2026). A ‘Limitless Frontier’? Neoliberalism, Silicon Valley and the Commercialization of Space. Modern Intellectual History. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244326100705
• ‘Most (if not all!) deaths are to some extent suicides’: Human capital and endogenous mortality in Gary Becker’s work
  
  Ibled, C. (2026). ‘Most (if not all!) deaths are to some extent suicides’: Human capital and endogenous mortality in Gary Becker’s work. Economy and Society, 55(1), 188-209. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2025.2571323
• Between Neoliberalism and Fascism: Louis Rougier, Race, and the Ends of Neoliberal Ideology
  
  Cornelissen, L., & Ibled, C. (2026). Between Neoliberalism and Fascism: Louis Rougier, Race, and the Ends of Neoliberal Ideology. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 27(1), 7-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2025.2483768
• ‘Founder as Victim, Founder as God’: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and the two bodies of the entrepreneur
  
  Ibled, C. (2025). ‘Founder as Victim, Founder as God’: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and the two bodies of the entrepreneur. Journal of Cultural Economy, 18(5), 629-649. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2025.2471602
• The ‘Optimistic Cruelty’ of Hayek’s Market Order: Neoliberalism, Pain and Social Selection
  
  Ibled, C. (2023). The ‘Optimistic Cruelty’ of Hayek’s Market Order: Neoliberalism, Pain and Social Selection. Theory, Culture & Society, 40(3), 81-101. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221126305

Report

• Star Wars: Why the Left Should Protect the Status of Space as Humanity’s Commons
  
  Ibled, C. (2025). Star Wars: Why the Left Should Protect the Status of Space as Humanity’s Commons. Common Wealth.