Contributor(s): Professor Frank Trentmann | What we consume has become the defining feature of our lives: our economies live or die by spending, we are treated more as consumers than workers, and even public services are presented to us as products in a supermarket. Frank Trentmann provides a long view on the global challenges of our relentless pursuit of more - from waste and debt to stress and inequality. Frank Trentmann is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, and directed the £5 million Cultures of Consumption research programme; his book Free Trade Nation won the Whitfield Prize. He was educated at Hamburg University, the LSE and at Harvard, where he received his PhD. His new book is Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First. Janet Hartley is Professor of International History and Head of the Department of International History at LSE. The Department of International History (@lsehistory) is one of the top five university history departments in the UK.