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Staff Profile

Dr Jacqui Close

Senior Lecturer

  • Email: jacqueline.close1@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: 0191 20887876
  • Address: School of Geography, Politics and Sociology
    Newcastle University
    Room 4.104
    Henry Daysh Building
    Newcastle
    NE1 7RU
Teaching

My research interests lie in the complexities and experiences of everyday lives, including identities, inequalities and social justice. My undergraduate teaching spans methodological and theoretical perspectives and how the two inform and complement one another. 

In 2024/25 I will be Module Leader for SOC1030, Sociological Imagination and Module Leader for SOC3097, Class in Everyday Life.

In addition to teaching, I am currently Director of Education in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology.


Research
ESRC funded PhD completed 2017: Ideals and Expectations: Representations, Practices and Governance of Contemporary Motherhood. This qualitative research is based primarily on semi-structured interviews with mothers, examining identity, neoliberal governance and moral worth. The thesis is an exploration of the “truth” of mothering, which I argue can only be known by examining the project of the child in the making of neo-liberal selves. It builds a framework through setting out how a technology of governance works, identifying the spread of doxa through neuroscience presumptions, and looks at how “wilful dependency” has become a dominant discourse in the everyday and in policy-making.
Publications