Rob Hawkes
LightNews LightNews
banner
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Rob Hawkes
@robbhawkes.bsky.social
2.7K followers 3.5K following 290 posts
Money happens; @moneyontheleft.bsky.social editorial collective; Past Chair @modernistudies.bsky.social; credit @wherecreditsdue.bsky.social; researching literature, money, and trust; he/him; https://linktr.ee/robhawkesMotL
Posts Replies Media Videos
robbhawkes.bsky.social
On Weds 26 November from 3.30-4.30pm GMT @robynollett.bsky.social and I will be sharing some of our latest research via MS Teams as part of @teessideuni.bsky.social’s English & Creative Writing Research Seminar series. Why not join us online?
Event poster reading: ENGLISH & CREATIVE WRITING RESEARCH SEMINAR Dr Robyn Ollett, 'From Severance to Reparation: Re-reading Contemporary Double Life Narratives' Dr Rob Hawkes, '"I’ve got an unfortunate talent for figues": Queering Literary and Monetary Genres in The Talented Mr Ripley' WEDNESDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2025 3.30-4.30pm GMT Online via MS Teams TO REQUEST AN INVITATION LINK PLEASE EMAIL: J.FORD@TEES.AC.UK Teesside University The poster also features publicity images for the Netflix series Ripley and the AppleTV+ series Severance
November 10, 2025 at 2:56 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
From monetary silencing to the politics of receivability, new stories of abundance & bonds becoming cash.

These are practical questions, not obscure theories: Who gets to create money? Which institutions accept which forms of credit? How do we expand democratic participation in monetary design?
“I call the processes that reduce money users to individuals who have no role in shaping money creation 'monetary silencing.' [...] Silencing processes discourage questions like 'Who ought to make currency, and according to what rules?' When silencing is successful, monetary design and its stakes disappear from view.” Jakob Feinig, Moral Economies of Money (2022) “Nominally 'volunteer' labor builds good faith and trust within a community, but that kind of credit is not usable at a grocery store. What is relevant is where credit is receivable. Today, as campaigns like Mamdani's promote pilots of municipal grocery stores and other public institutions, we have the opportunity to publicly deliberate receivability itself.” Money the Left, 'It's Time for Complementary Currencies' (2025) “When we ask what we can promise to deliver for one another, rather than what we owe, very different stories about our future become possible [...], stories where 'credit as plot' drives themes of abundance or forgiveness, rather than finite redistribution and extraction.” Benjamin Wilson, Care, Climate, and Debt (2022) “When, in the early days of COVID, the Federal Reserve created a facility to make municipal bonds receivable for dollars, it turned debt into cash almost overnight. 'Trade your debt for money' sounds impossible until politics makes it happen.” Will Beaman, 'Blue Bonds: Duck or Rabbit?' (2025)
October 30, 2025 at 8:04 AM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Excited to see this cover image for the forthcoming volume Inflationary Modernities on the @springer.springernature.com website. It’s due out January 2026 and features a chapter @videotroph.bsky.social and I have co-authored on #TheGreatGatsby 🎉
Cover image for Inflationary Modernities Literature, Culture and Economy, edited by Wayne Stables and Kieran Brown, in the Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics series. The images features an image of a large balloon with a crowd of people in the foreground.
October 29, 2025 at 7:54 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
An especially popular choice among the icons our workshop participants chose to adorn their ‘Curious Credits’ at last night’s workshop was a certain @zackpolanski.bsky.social. Green is colour of money after all!
A ‘Curious Credit’ bank note decorated with stars, strips of coloured paper, a rainbow, and a picture of Zack Polanski
October 24, 2025 at 4:50 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
moneyontheleft.org/2025/01/16/u...
The two buttons meme with the UK government faced with a choice between rethinking HE funding and increasing tuition fees
October 20, 2025 at 9:06 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Princess Leia shooting church pews from a blaster
July 14, 2025 at 1:40 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Good work @newstatesman.com, you appear to have completely forgotten publishing this 2022 article 🙃

www.newstatesman.com/politics/eco...

@iipp-ucl.bsky.social
Screenshot of an article from The New Statesman published in 2022: ‘Why the British state is a magic money tree,‘ by Josh Ryan-Collins. The sub-headline reads ‘Government spending power is limited not by tax revenues or borrowing, but by the productive capacity of the UK economy and political will.’
July 2, 2025 at 4:21 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
“I argue that the neochartalist understanding of money both entails and demands a new theory of trust as a form of (un)conditional openness that is public, collective, and boundless as opposed to private, individualised, or scarce.”

@moneyontheleft.bsky.social
Graphic for Money on the Left: History, Theory Practice. (Un)conditional Openness: Towards a Neochartalist Theory of Money and Trust, by Rob Hawkes. The image depicts a crowd surfer, symbolising trust and collectivity.
May 31, 2025 at 10:40 AM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
I paid a lovely flying visit to that London yesterday to speak @londonmodernismsem.bsky.social on #TheGreatGatsby, inflation, & the public money paradigm. I said a quick ‘Hi’ to a modernist icon on my way to @ies-sas.bsky.social & treated myself to a new keyring from the @britishlibrary.bsky.social.
Senate House, Malet Street, London A picture of me in sunglasses and a floral shirt, standing next to the bronze head of Virginia Woolf in Tavistock Square Gardens, Bloomsbury. A keyring in the form of a miniature copy of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
May 11, 2025 at 3:24 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
I’m looking forward to returning to Senate House tomorrow, where I co-organised a 3-day conference on Ford Madox Ford’s #ParadesEnd in 2012 and last visited for the 2014 @modernistudies.bsky.social conference, Modernism Now! I’m presenting on #TheGreatGatsby @londonmodernismsem.bsky.social from 3pm.
Senate House, London
May 9, 2025 at 4:42 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Happy 100th Birthday to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which was first published on 10 April 1925 and which I’m looking forward to discussing at the @londonmodernismsem.bsky.social one month from today 🥳
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925), first edition jacket image.
April 10, 2025 at 2:50 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
4 years ago today I made my very first contribution to @moneyontheleft.bsky.social!

It’s impossible to express just how much being part of this incredible collective project has meant (and continues to mean) to me since then, but it’s a lot!

moneyontheleft.org/2021/03/22/m...
Money, Literature & Trust with Rob Hawkes (Guest Lecture), posted on March 22, 2021, by Money on the Left
March 22, 2025 at 10:26 AM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
1 year ago my @moneyontheleft.bsky.social talk ‘How Can Novels Help Us Think About Money… and Maybe Even Save the Planet?’ was @the-syllabus.bsky.social’s Podcast of the Week.

Today, with climate change deniers newly emboldened, rethinking money to avoid ecosocial disaster is more urgent than ever.
An image of a stack of books accompanied by the text: The Syllabus - Podcast of the Week: ‘How Can Novels Help Us Think About Money...and Maybe Even Save the Planet?’, Rob Hawkes.
March 7, 2025 at 7:34 AM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Happy Weird Pride Day to all my weirdo friends! I’ll be tuning into this, featuring the brilliant @katefoxwriter75.bsky.social, later. Will you?

weirdpride.day
Poster for Weird Pride Day, 4th March 2025: A day for everyone who has ever been called weird to celebrate. Online event featuring Robin Ince, Josie Long, Kate Fox, and Fergus Murray: 17:30 - 18:30 GMT (see www.weirdpride.day for details).
March 4, 2025 at 12:32 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Cory Doctorow, The Lost Cause (2023): torpublishinggroup.com/the-lost-cau...

“[…] but the wild-ass part is the munis and unis. […] Towns and universities started minting their own currencies […].”
A page from Cory Doctorow’s 2023 novel, The Lost Cause, featuring the text: “[…] but the wild-ass part is the munis and unis.” “I sorta know what those are—” “Local currencies,” she said. “It was a big idea in the early GND days, when unemployment was up at thirty percent and the fed wouldn’t spring loose any more relief money. Towns and universities started minting their own currencies, managed by credit unions. The FDIC said it would yank their charters and the cities said they didn’t give a shit, they’d keep using them, charter or no, and then Uwayni got elected and it didn’t matter anymore, because she started the Jobs Guarantee.” “Right,” I said. “Before my time.” “Mine too, but it was a big deal for the OG Blue Helmets, those Canadians, who said that it was the threat of wildcat money that gave their prime minister the leverage she needed to get the Bank of Canada to give in. It’s been this kind of legendary weapon ever since, like a lost mystical doomsday sword that no one dared to use.” Cory Doctorow, The Lost Cause (2023), cover image feature a coiled snake and the text: ‘A novel of truth and reconciliation in our polarized future.’
February 27, 2025 at 7:38 AM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Over the last year, @videotroph.bsky.social & I have been thinking, chatting, & writing together about modernism, inflation, & The Great Gatsby - it’s been such a fun & generative conversation that, for me, has underlined, once again, just how much literature can tell us about money & economics 💰
The first edition dust jacket for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, featuring a dark blue background with a pair of eyes and lips floating above a cityscape
November 16, 2024 at 8:54 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Excited to receive my contributor’s copy of Finance Aesthetics: A Critical Glossary today! 🎉

www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-p...
A picture of the book Finance Aesthetics: A Critical Glossary A picture of my entry on ‘Trust’ in Finance Aesthetics: A Critical Glossary
November 13, 2024 at 8:32 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
THANK YOU to all who helped, presented, contributed, listened, questioned & shared so generously at #EphemeralModernisms! I barely took any photos, but here are some bags, a bunny & a brutalist building. It was lovely to see old @modernistudies.bsky.social friends & to make some new ones 🥰
A pile of Ephemeral Modernisms conference tote bags A University of Leeds campus bunny The Roger Stevens building, University of Leeds
June 30, 2024 at 7:36 AM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
I am delighted to announce that registration is now open for the 2024 BAMS (@modernistudies.bsky.social) conference, Ephemeral Modernisms! For details, links to the provisional in-person and online conference programmes, and to book your place, please visit: bams.ac.uk/bams-confere...
The Ephemeral Modernisms conference logo: an hour glass next to the words 'Ephemeral Modernisms'
May 16, 2024 at 6:58 PM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
Have you submitted a proposal for 'Ephemeral Modernisms' yet? The deadline for individual papers is one week away (and for panels/other formats it's March 8)! Thinking caps on if not - we'd love to see you in Leeds in June #BAMS24

bams.ac.uk/bams-confere... @modernistudies.bsky.social
Ephemeral Modernisms Logo
February 9, 2024 at 10:54 AM
robbhawkes.bsky.social
I’m looking forward sharing my thoughts on literature and money (and how thinking about them differently might help us to address the climate crisis) at MIMA in a few weeks. Book here if you’d like to come along: bit.ly/48A4FQV
Poster for ‘How can novels help us think about money…and maybe even save the planet?’, 1.15-2pm on Wednesday 25 October at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
October 5, 2023 at 3:14 PM