Sacha Hilhorst

Sacha Hilhorst is an ESRC-funded Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Her work focuses on the political dynamics of England’s post-industrial towns, particularly the crisis of political legitimacy in former mining and manufacturing regions. She employs ethnographic methods to explore how economic decline intersects with working-class political subjectivities and narratives of corruption.

Her research interests include deindustrialisation, political ethnography, and decolonizing sociological methodologies. She contributes to teaching on the Social Scientific Analysis of Inequalities course, integrating her expertise in political sociology and place-based research.

Hilhorst’s recent publications analyze corruption discourses in post-industrial contexts and the erosion of trust in political institutions. Her work bridges economic shifts, political disaffection, and the legacies of industrial decline. She is fluent in Dutch and English, enhancing cross-cultural research perspectives.