Newcastle University

Introduction

After a first degree as a mature student at Liverpool University, I did my PhD (researching the mother-daughter relationship) at Lancaster University. I joined the school in 2006, after posts at Lancaster and Durham. My research interests centre on social and sociological aspects of identity, including the relationship between 'big issues' and the personal pleasures and pains of 'doing' identity. I am particularly concerned with the ways in which a concern with identity underwrites a number of contemporary troubling issues, such as authenticity, belonging, and value. Which identities are understood as worthwhile? Which are not? and why?

Roles and responsibilities 

 Head of Sociology

Qualifications

BA (Hons) Liverpool
PhD Lancaster

Previous Positions

Lecturer in Sociology and Women's Studies, Lancaster University
Lecturer in Sociology, Durham University

Memberships

British Sociological Association.

Research Interests

Identities, especially in relation to gender, class and generation; the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu; people's negotiations with expert knowledges; narratives; psychoanalysis and psycho-social analysis; kinship and families; motherhood, childhood and the mother-daughter relationship, the sociology of everyday life.
I am happy to discuss supervision in any of these (or related) areas.

Current Work

My latest book (Identity: Sociological Perspectives, Polity) brings together many of the themes of my research over the last 10 years - notably how issues of identity act to 'trouble' social relations.
A second edition of the book is in press (2013), and I am working on a book to be published in Palgrave's 'themes in social theory' book series (Identity and Social Theory). This book will discuss conceptual approaches to, and empirical investigation of, identity matters.

I have also been exploring themes of identity and inequality in recent articles (see list of publications). Work in progress includes an exploration of nostalgia, and of the social contexts of parenting / non-parenting decisions.  

Postgraduate Supervision and Examining

currently supervising:

Ipshita Debnath (ft) Log-in / Log-out: a Sociological Exploration of how the Internet is Affecting Kinship Relations. Supervision with Dr Anselma Gallinat.

Jacqueline Close (ft ESRC-funded)  Ideals and Expectations: Representations, Practices and Governance of Contemporary Motherhood. Supervision with Prof. Jackie Leach Scully

Erica Timoney (ft)  Falling Through the Gap: Muslim Women and the Construction of Identities in Tension. Supervision with Prof. Jackie Leach Scully.

 Michelle Addison (ft. ESRC-funded) (Re)making and (Un)doing the classed and gendered ‘worker’: The use and exchange of emotions in the workplace. Supervision with Prof.  Jackie Leach Scully.

recently completed

Peter Steggals (ft ESRC-funded). Harming the body/constructing the self: identity, selfhood and power relations in the construction of a self-harming subject. Newcastle University.

Victoria Mountford (ft ESRC-funded) Everyday class distinctions in Higher Education.  Newcastle University.  

 Gemma Metcalfe (ft. ESRC-funded) Contemporary Gender Relations in Former Mining Communities. Newcastle University

Sabina Begum (M.Phil, ft) Narratives of Radical Lives: Women, Auto/Biography and Feminism in Bangladesh. Newcastle University.  

Ceri Black (ft. ESRC-funded) Queering virginity: social, cultural and embodied notions of the question of what counts as real sex. Newcastle University. 

Elaine Robson (ft. ESRC-funded) The Problem of Youth: Representations of Young People in the British Press. Durham University. 

Steve Walls (ft. ESRC-funded) 'Are you being served?' Gendered Aesthetics among Retail Workers. Durham University.

Judy Richards (ft. ESRC-funded) Marketing the self in cyberspace. Durham University. 

Andrew Smith (ft. Durham University funded)  The process of change in a public-private partnership.  Durham University. 

 Susan Parker (pt) Mothering in the New Moral Economy: Making, Marking and Classing Selves. Durham University.

External PhD Examiner

Charles Leddy-Owen, University of Surrey. 2013

Irina Cheresheva, Central European University. 2012 (comprehensive examination)

Nigel Cox, Sheffield Hallam University. 2011

Kaisa Ketokivi, University of Helskinki. 2010

Jane Liffen, Loughborough University. 2008

Dawn Gurbutt, Lancaster University. 2004

Annie Meyer, University of Manchester. 2004

Internal PhD examiner

Angela Abbott. 2011

Alison Jobe. 2008

Elizabeth Brace. 2008

Thomas Hill. 2005

Emma Uprichard. 2004

Cynthia Horrocks. 2000

Heshni Moynifar. 1999.

Esteem Indicators

2003-2006, co-editor of Sociology, the journal of the British Sociological Association.

Gven over 30 invited papers, interviewed by local and national UK press, Taiwanese press and Canadian public-service radio.  I appeared on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2003_17_thu_04.shtml (2003) and was recently (2013)  a discussant on Thinking Allowed (BBC Radio 4): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qm7pd 

'Disgusted Subjects' (2005) has recently been translated into Swedish.

Member of the ESRC Peer Review College 2009 - 2012

Co-convenor of the Social Divisions / Social Identities stream, BSA annual conference. 

Invited participant in conversation with Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, 'Mapping the social order'. Part of The Serpentine Gallery's Map Marathon, 16 October 2010:
http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2010/10/map_marathon_maps_for_the_21st_2.html 

http://vimeo.com/24517574

Cited by Barbie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5URYMzHAdQ0

plenary / keynote papers

  ‘Noble workers and angry young men: class nostalgia, progress and identity’, Enquire Conference, University of Nottingham (2011)

 ‘What’s love got to do with it?  on the difference between having and being a mother’, Motherhood Conference, Centre for Women’s Studies, University of Lancaster (2000).

Funding

British Academy Small Grant (with Dr Jackie Leach Scully) 'Parenthood and non-parenthood in an age of assisted conception'

Projects

• Parenthood and non-parenthood in an age of reproductive technologies
  Project Leader(s): Dr Stephanie Lawler; Dr Jackie Leach-Scully

Undergraduate Teaching

Module leader, SOC 2058, Understanding Social Change  (level 2)

Lecturer on SOC 1031, Knowing in Sociology (level 1)

Postgraduate Teaching

Module Leader,  SOC 8044, Being, Belonging and Identity

• Lawler S. Identity: Sociological Perspectives. Cambridge: Polity, 2013. In Press.
• Lawler S. Unequal persons: a response to Simon Susen. Social Epistemology 2013, 27(3). In Press.
• Lawler S. Identities and social divisions. In: Payne, G, ed. Social Divisions. London: Palgrave, 2012. Submitted.
• Lawler S. White like them: whiteness and anachronistic space in representations of the English white working class. Ethnicities 2012, 12(4), 409-426.
• Lawler S. Afterword: thinking and rethinking class. In: Salmenniemi, S, ed. Rethinking Class in Russia. London: Ashgate, 2012.
• Lawler S. "Normal people": Recognition and the middle classes. In: Janice McLaughlin, Peter Phillimore, and Diane Richardson, ed. Contesting Recognition: Culture, Identity and Citizenship. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp.53-73.
• Lawler S. Encyclopaedia entries for 'habitus', 'symbolic capital', 'symbolic violence'. In: Southerton, D, ed. Encyclopaedia of Consumer Culture. London: Sage, 2011.
• Lawler S. 'The middle classes and their aristocratic others: nature as culture in classification struggles'. Journal of Cultural Economy 2009, 1(3), 245-261.
• Lawler S. Identity: Sociological Perspectives. Cambridge: Polity, 2008.
• Lawler S. Stories in the social world. In: Pickering M, ed. Research Methods in Cultural Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
• Lawler S. ‘Att känna avsmak: Så bildas medelklassens identitet’ (Swedish translation of ‘Disgusted subjects’). Fronesis 2007, 24, 131-147.
• Johnson P, Lawler S. Coming Home to Love and Class. Sociological Research Online 2005, 10(3).
• Lawler S. Disgusted subjects: the making of middle-class identities. The Sociological Review 2005, 53(3), 429-446.
• Lawler S. 'Introduction: class, culture, identity'. Sociology 2005, 39(5).
• Lawler S. Rules of engagement: Habitus, power and resistance. In: Adkins L; Skeggs B, ed. Feminism After Bourdieu. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, pp.110-128.
• Lawler S. Mobs and monsters : Independent man meets Paulsgrove woman. Feminist Theory 2002, 3(1), 103-113.
• Lawler S. Narrative in social research. In: May T, ed. Qualitative research in action. London: SAGE, 2002, pp.242-258.
• Lawler S. 'Introduction: the futures of gender and sexuality'. Social Epistemology 2001, 15(21), 71-76.
• Lawler S. ‘”A real giving up of self”: children’s needs and maternal subjectivities in narratives of middle-class motherhood’. In: Atkinson K; Oerton S, ed. Feminisms on Edge: Discourses and National Identities. Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press, 2000, pp.81 - 100.
• Lawler S. ‘Escape and escapism: representing working-class women’. In: Munt S, ed. Cultural Studies and the Working Class. London: Cassell, 2000, pp.113–128.
• Lawler S. Mothering the Self: Mothers, Daughters, Subjects. London: Routledge, 2000.
• Lawler S. ‘Getting out and getting away: women’s narratives of class mobility'. Feminist Review 1999, 63, 3-24.
• Lawler S. 1999 ‘Children need but mothers only want: the power of “needs talk” in the constitution of childhood’. In: Seymour J; Bagguley P, ed. Relating Intimacies: Power and Resistance. London: MacMillan, 1999, pp.64-88.
• Lawler S. ‘Motherhood and identity’. In: Cosslett T, ed. Women, Power and Resistance. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996, pp.153 –164.
• Lawler S. ‘”I . never felt as though I fitted”: family romances and the mother-daughter relationship’. In: Pearce L; Stacey J, ed. Romance Revisited. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995, pp.265-278.
• Lawler S. ‘Mothers and daughters'. In: Warde A; Abercrombie N, ed. Family, Household and the Life Course. Lancaster: Framework Press, 1994.