Lancaster University

Faculty Member, Sociology

Senior Lecturer

About

My research currently has two main themes:

1. Revolting Subjects

Social Abjection and Revolt are pivotal concepts within my current research, bringing together intersecting interests in migration, borders, social class, race, ethnicity, disability, poverty through a focus on mediation and political aesthetics. My forthcoming monograph, Revolting Subjects (Zed) examines the relationship between mediation, subjectivity and inequality in the tumultuous context of neoliberal Britain. It explores the double meaning of 'revolt': the processes through which specific populations are figured as revolting and become subject to censure and the practices through which these populations revolt against their abject subjectification. Revolting Subjects aims to deepen critical understandings of neoliberalism as a psycho-social formation by exploring the ways in which individuals and groups embody, live, negotiate and resist prevailingideologies of selfhood. In particular, it examines the role of media (analogue and digital) in producing social marginalisation and as routes for recoding abjection, and protesting against inequalities. Project updates at: http://revoltingsubjects.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/revolting-subjects/

With Katarzyna Marciniak (Ohio University) I am preparing a special issue of Citizenship Studies on `Immigrant Protest` and an edited book Immigrant Protest: Politics, Aesthetics, and Everyday Dissent (SUNY).

Connected to this research theme, I am also part of an ESRC funded project called'Making Asylum Seekers Legible and Visible: An Analysis of the Dilemmas and Mitigating Strategies of Asylum Advocacy in the UK and US ' (for information see www.asylum-network.com, and link with us on twitter http://twitter.com/#!/asylumresearch)

2. Maternal Publics

I have published widely in this area, most recently editing a special issue of Feminist Review on `Birth' (2009). I sit on the editorial board of Studies in the Maternaland the MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics) international research network. I co-directed (with Dr Caroline Gatrell) a research project entitled Hard Labour: The Cultural Politics of Reproduction for which we organised a workshop on Maternal Bodies (2005) and an international conference, Birth (2007). I am currently working (with Dr Celia Roberts and Dr Candice Satchwell) on a European-funded research project on Childbirth Organisations in the UK 2009-2011. With Dr Lisa Baraitser (Birkbeck) I am co-writing a monograph on Maternal Publics and Counterpublics.

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