I’m interested in how people and institutions co-create autonomous livelihoods together - namely how we share costs, negotiate trade-offs, and build systems that uphold just collective life over time.

My work sits in the field of mesoeconomic research, drawing together public policy, economic theory, and social psychology to understand how cooperation is made durable. Much of my research looks at how societies experience and ascribe meaning to our interdependent relationships, considering:

• how we decide what we owe each other

• how we speak and act on wealth concentration

• how cultural trust and credibility are built or lost

• how institutions shape what feels possible or fair

• how infrastructure systems carry social meaning as well as material functions

I think often in the context of Gillian Rose’s writing about ‘the broken middle’, a pragmatic realm of society where diverse needs clash. This requires sustained “reflection on boundaries”, she says. A city is a geography mediated by elements of past, future, an active present, dwellings, and the material-economic base which runs through each.

In practice, I work with organisations across Aotearoa New Zealand on housing, retirement system justice, infrastructure, climate transition, and social cohesion challenges. This includes work on policy design, coordination frameworks, and long-term system change. I am very interested in the role of art and literature in shaping economic thought and values, and how economics as a field might free its loyalty to technical forms.

I live in Canada, but continue to work extensively on economic challenges which affect Aotearoa, New Zealand.

You can contact me via:

email: rosiejwcollins@gmail.com

linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rosiejcollins