I hold a PhD in political sociology from the Department of Sociology at LSE. Before coming to LSE, I studied social theory in Amsterdam and sociology and humanities in Riga. As a political sociologist I am interested in the interconnections between the political structures we inhabit and the ways in which we imagine ourselves as particular kinds of political subjects. My research intersects social theory, sociology and anthropology of the state, and theories of subjectivity.
My doctoral research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and it was based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork at an unemployment office in Latvia. One of the central questions of my dissertation is – why do people who are most disadvantaged by neoliberal welfare reforms in fact actively embrace the neoliberal political rationality of individual responsibility? I argue that the appeal of this political rationality, both for policy makers and for ordinary citizens, has been due to the way in which it aligns with a historically shaped narrative of freedom.
An article based on this research has just been published in the British Journal of Sociology (see below). In this article, I explore the politics of waiting in post-socialism and argue that the passivity of the unemployed, while being stigmatised as a Soviet relic, is in fact produced by the policies of the post-Soviet state. I am working also on a book manuscript drawing on this research, entitled ‘The Ethics of the Willing: An Ethnography of Post-Soviet Neoliberalism’.
Currently I am developing a new research project together with Professor George Gaskell, envisioned as a sociological exploration of societal resilience. This research will be positioned at the intersection of social theory, sociology of knowledge, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) and it builds on my interest and experience in STS, developed while at the University of Amsterdam.
Selected Publications
Peer-reviewed papers
Ozoliņa-Fitzgerald, L. (2016) A State of Limbo: The politics of waiting in neoliberal Latvia. In: British Journal of Sociology 67(3).
Ozoliņa, L. (2010) Raspberries, Tablecloths, and Critical Thinking: Accountability Reforms in Post-Socialist Latvia. In: East European Politics and Societies 24(4): 572-594.
Recent conference presentations
“On Sociology as a Listener’s Art”, conference “The Art of Knowing”, Latvian Academy of Culture. Riga, Latvia (May 2016).
“A State of Limbo: The Politics of Waiting in Neo-Liberal Latvia”, the 13th Annual NYLON Graduate Student Conference, Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Berlin, Germany (March 2015).
“The Tyrannies of Intimacy: Notes on Neo-Liberal Political Subjectivity Formation in Latvia”, international research workshop “Popular Geopolitics in Russia and Post-Soviet Eastern Europe”, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. London, UK (February 2015).
“The Moral Economy of the Latvian Post-Socialist Welfare State: Ethnography of an Unemployment Office”, international workshop “Central and East European Employment Relations”, University of Greenwich. London, UK (January 2015).