Dr Jacqui Close

Teaching Fellow

Email: jacqueline.close1@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: 0191 20887876
Address: School of Geography, Politics and Sociology
Newcastle University
Room G.10
20 Windsor Terrace
Newcastle, NE2 4HE

Teaching

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

In 2019/20 I will be teaching SOC1031 - Knowing in Sociology; SOC2069 Researching Social Life I; and SOC8034 Social Divisions and Inequality.

In addition to teaching, I am also the Senior Tutor for Sociology students.

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

Close J. Tactics and strategies to survive 'student engagement', or joining the Soil Society and other stories: A panel discussion. Learning and Teaching 2018, 11(1), 109-130.