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?

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.
I am happy to discuss supervision in any of these (or related) areas.

Current Work

My latest book (Identity: Sociological Perspectives, Polity, 2008)brings together many of the themes of my research over the last 10 years - notably how issues of identity act to 'trouble' social relations.
I have recently completed an article on narratives in cultural studies for M. Pickering, ed. Research in Cultural Studies. (Edinburgh University Press). Work in progress includes work on classed identities in the contexts of whiteness and nation, an exploration of nostagia; and identities in the context of social divisions, as well as work on the social contexts of parenting / non-parenting decisions.  

Postgraduate Supervision

identity; narratives; auto/biography; sexuality; heterosexual romance; gender and ageing; aesthetic labour; mothering; class; generation; the sociology of everyday life.

currently supervising:

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

Gemma Metcalfe (ft. ESRC-funded) Contemporary Gender Relations in Former Mining Communities. Supervision with Dr Alison Stenning (geography) and Dr Tracey Warren (Nottingham).

Victoria Mountford (ft ESRC-funded) Class in Higher Education. Supervision with Prof. Robert Hollands.

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

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

Steve Walls (ESRC funded, +3, ft) 'Are you being served?' Gendered Aesthetics among Retail Workers. Durham University.

Judy Richards (ESRC funded, 1+3, ft) Marketing the self in cyberspace. Durham University. 

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

Elaine Robson (ESRC funded, +3, ft.) The Problem of Youth: Representations of Young People in the British Press. Durham University. 

Ceri Black (ESRC funded, 1+3, ft) Queering virginity: social, cultural and embodied notions of the question of what counts as real sex. Newcastle University. 

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

Esteem Indicators

2003-2006, co-editor of Sociology, the journal of the British Sociological Association.
Given 26 invited papers, interviewed by local and national UK press, Taiwanese press and Canadian public-service radio.  Appeared on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

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

Member of the ESRC Peer Review College

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

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 2066, The Sociology of Identities (level 2)
Module leader, SOC 2073, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly: Emotions in the Social World (level 2)

Postgraduate Teaching

Module Leader (alternate years), SOC 8044, Being, Belonging and Identity

• Lawler S. White like them: whiteness and anachronistic space in representations of the English white working class. Ethnicities 2012. In Press.
• Lawler S. Afterword: thinking and rethinking class. In: Salmenniemi, S, ed. Rethinking Class in Russia. London: Ashgate, 2012. In Press.
• Lawler S. "Normal people": Recognition and the middle classes. In: Richardson, D., McLaughlin, J. Phillimore, P, ed. Contesting Recognition: Culture, Identity and Citizenship. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave McMillan, 2011, pp.53-73.
• Lawler S. Encyclopaedia entries for 'habitus', 'symbolic capital', 'symbolic violence'. In:Southerton, D., ed. Encyclopaedia of Consumer Culture.London:Sage,2012, pp. submitted.
• 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.