Capitalising Security through life insurance in the UK

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Funded by the Leverhulme Trust

Project team: Dr Louis Lobo-Guerrero (Keele), Research associate (TBA)

Dr Luis Lobo-Guerrero, SPIRE / Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice, has been awarded £72,000 from The Leverhulme Trust for an 18 month research project entitled ‘Capitalising security through life insurance in the UK’. Building on previous work, Dr Lobo-Guerrero will further explore his capitalisation of life hypothesis that argues that life insurance translates an insured person’s future economic vitality into present investment capital.

The development of the hypothesis will help understand the development of life insurance as a condition for capitalist development, both historically and in present times. In so doing the project seeks to shed light as to how contemporary forms of life insurance developed and marketed in the UK promote and protect the livelihood of insured populations. The project will help resource the thematic priority of ‘Insurance and the Security of Liberal Governance’ within the Keele-based (RC-SPIRE) Biopolitics of Security Research Unit.