Alessia Sofia
Sociology
University of Bristol, Faculty of Social Sciences and LawStart date: Sep 2024
Research topic: Identity E-commerce: Commodification and Exploitation of Diverse Communities in Virtual Influencer Culture
My research explores the impact of Virtual Influencers (VIs) on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, focusing on how they commodify gender and race representations for profit. By examining VIs in comparison to real-life influencers, I aim to understand how their content influences audience perceptions of social movements like MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Using a qualitative methods approach, including digital ethnography, focus groups and critical discourse analysis, I investigate both the construction of VI identities and audience engagement. Ultimately, my goal is to provide guidelines for safeguarding diversity and inclusion in the emerging metaverse.Research supervisors: Rebecca Coleman, Jessica Ogden
Email: xb24810@bristol.ac.uk
Alexandra Onofrei
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Exeter, Sociology, Philosophy and AnthropologyStart date: September 2017
I look at Romanian minimal techno (rominimal) as a distinct concept of rave, community and affective environment. I investigate the co-emergences of identity and community as they come to be articulated in the rominimal scene.How does one make identity through and with rominimal? What social needs/conditions does it respond to and how is it sustained through mundane/ritual practices as a consistent and particular scene and community? I also look at how the identities and statuses of ‘expert’ and ‘fan’ are articulated in relation to each other, technology and global trends in electronic music.
Research supervisors: Professor Mike Michael , Dr. Tom Rice
Email: ao330@exeter.ac.uk
Website/Blog: https://www.facebook.com/lexiamajora/
Anna Seecharan
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Exeter, College of Social Sciences and International StudiesStart date: October 2020
Research topic: Food knowledge in migratory bodies: an embodied approach to taste/smell memories through time and space.
My research focusses on embodied food practices and asks the fundamental question: where does food knowledge reside? I explore sensory perceptions (taste/smell in particular) and the role they play in locating experiences of food and eating within the body, while also going beyond the body to the mind in order to understand how sensory memories are implicated in the construction of selfhood and identity. Food is considered as a material substance through which cultural knowledge can be carried and reproduced. I will work with migrants to investigate how sensory taste/smell memories may enable food to provide a sense of continuity of bodily experience through spatial and temporal ruptures, and how shared embodied practices of food and eating might foster belonging.Research supervisors: Professor Harry G West, Professor Giovanna Colombetti
Email: as1472@exeter.ac.uk
Boglarka Kiss
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Exeter, College of Social Sciences and International StudiesStart date: October 2020
Research topic: Tracing Microbial Ontologies in Scientific Practice—From Object of Inquiry to Technological Tool
My research focusses on the ways in which knowledge generated in microbiology becomes meaningful for society. I look at how microbes become enrolled in biotechnological applications including gene editing or technologies for mitigating plastic pollution. I focus on the material practice of microbiology and biotechnology and scientists’ interactions with microbes. I am especially interested in how enlisting bacteria and viruses as tools in biotechnology might change microbial behaviour and ways of being.Research supervisors: Dr Astrid Schrader, Professor Gail Davies
Email: bk296@exeter.ac.uk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bodgehog
Courtney Sommer
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Exeter, Sociology, Philosophy and AnthropologyStart date: September 2018
Research topic: Issues of ideology and legitimacy in Evidence-Based Medicine and Psychiatry
My research explores the history and function(s) of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM), focussing specifically on the impact of EBM on psychiatry and mental health policymaking. I will be doing so by exploring the ongoing periods of consultation in response to the NICE Guideline on Depression in Adults. The purpose of the project is to push thinking on EBM beyond methodological considerations, to encompass its ideological and discursive functions. Key questions I am asking myself are: What gets to count as evidence? What does it mean to be evidence-based? Why is it better to be evidence-based than not? What is the relationship between EBM and diagnostic psychiatry? I am particularly interested in the history of psychiatry, scientific authority, sociology of health and illness, mad studies, and feminist epistemology.Research supervisors: Dr Hannah Farrimond, Dr Angela Cassidy
Professional memberships/Positions held:
Co-founder of make space, a user-led collective creating spaces for more nuanced and generous conversations about self-harm (Twitter: @makespace_co)Advisor to Action To Prevent Suicide, organisation providing trainings and awareness around suicide intervention/prevention.
Email: cmb232@exeter.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-sommer-250948a5/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/courtneysommer_
Dan Godshaw
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC +3)
University of Bristol, School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesStart date: September 2015
Research topic: (Im)mobile masculinities at the border: identity, power and personal relations in UK Immigration Removal Centres
My doctoral research seeks to better comprehend the under-researched terrains of masculinity and immigration detention in the UK and explore the gendered, inter sectional and multi-scalar dynamics of identity, power and personal relations that operate in these hidden carceral spaces. By developing recent theory on masculinities and detention, the project will expand understandings of gender, transnational migration and belonging. The research design – a qualitative mixed methods engagement with people inside and outside of detention – will enable me to examine how everyday lived experiences in detention are tied to broader gendered issues including state power and citizenship, border controls and the international securitisation of migration.Research supervisors: Dr Katharine Charsley, Dr Naomi Milner
Professional memberships/Positions held:
Migration Research Group, Gender Research Centre, Citizenship and Ethnicity Centre, Gender Reading Group Co-Convenor, Refugee Tales Organisational CommitteeEmail: dan.godshaw@bristol.ac.uk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanGodshaw
Daniel Newton
Sociology
1+3
University of Bristol, School of SociologyStart date: September 2023
Research topic: How are plurisexual men experimenting with radical affordances of ways of being and knowing binary sex, genders, and sexualities across changing spaces?
My research centres around plurisexual (cis and trans) men and radical imaginations, and attempts to prefigure radical ways of doing sexes, genders, and sexualities in resistance to binaries. I focus on creative, co-constitutive research method(ologie)s to reflect how plurisexual people are creators of their own epistemologies. I draw from work on embodiments, utopias, and queer theory, as well as sociology, cultural studies, and cultural geographies.Research supervisors: Dr Rosie Nelson, Prof. Katharine Charsley
Email: d.newton.2023@bristol.ac.uk
Twitter: _danielnewton
Website/Blog: www.imaginaries.uk
Eimear McLoughlin
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Exeter, Sociology, Philosophy and AnthropologyStart date: September 2016
Research topic: Slaughterhouse Culture: An Ethnography of Animal Slaughter in Denmark
The visibility of animal slaughter in Denmark contrasts starkly with the modes of concealment typical of slaughterhouses in industrialised societies. The public can enter a pig slaughterhouse and tour the facility, tracking the animal from the slaughterhouse gate to the dinner plate. Interestingly, Denmark boasts one of the highest meat consumption rates in the world. This transparency of animal slaughter transcends the slaughterhouse to other arenas of animal consumption. My ESRC-funded PhD will involve a 13-month ethnographic fieldwork wherein I will interrogate Danish cultural attitudes towards animals and explore how these are influenced by visibility of animal consumptive practices.Research supervisors: Dr Julien Dugnoille, Professor Henry Buller, Professor Harry West
Email: e.mcloughlin@exeter.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/etmcloughlin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/eimeartf
Website/Blog: http://eimearmcloughlin.weebly.com
Elizabeth Preece
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Bristol, School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesStart date: September 2018
Research topic: Cultural Capital and the Choir: A study of social stratification and the accumulation of cultural capital within choir schools and the Anglican choral tradition
Research supervisors: Will Atkinson, Lee Marshall
Email: ym18177@bristol.ac.uk
Florian Abraham
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology (ESRC +3)
University of Exeter, College of Social SciencesStart date: October 2017
Research topic: Uranium Mining in Greenland
The proposed Kvanefjeld mine in Greenland is estimated to be one of the largest Rare Earth Elements and uranium deposits in the world. Protests led by environmental NGOs emerged due to its potential impacts on the environment.I will address the reasons why this mine gathered attention whereas similar projects have not: the role played by the uranium in the emergence of the conflict will be investigated.
Although contributing to the green economy, potential environmental impacts suggest that this green economy would be developed through ‘not so green practices’. I will question how the green economy is defined and address this paradox.
Research supervisors: Professor Susan Molyneux-Hodgson, Professor Frances Wall
Email: f.abraham@exeter.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-abraham-89570627/
Gavriel Nelken
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Bristol, School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesStart date: October 2019
Research topic: Controlling gangmasters: modern slavery, migrant farmworkers, and the fight against 'caporali' in Southern Italy.
My research takes place at the intersection of critical migration studies and analyses of anti-trafficking. I will research the diverse array of policies, initiatives and campaigns set up by organisations as different as NGOs, trade unions, social responsibility offices of agribusiness companies, governments, and police force, that share the stated aim of fighting against caporalato, which is the “gangmaster system” that is allegedly responsible for the terrible living and working conditions of migrant farmworkers in the South of Italy.Research supervisors: Professor Bridget Anderson, Dr Manoj Dias-Abey, Julia O'Connell-Davidson
Email: qy19652@bristol.ac.uk
Jennifer Wilcox
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Exeter October 2019Start date: October 2019
Research topic: Is there a contagion effect to knife carrying/crime?
My research aims to understand how knife carrying/crime spreads in England among young people aged 10 to 25 years, to investigate urban and rural vulnerabilities, to generate a new conceptual framing of the debate around knife carrying/crime with a view to developing strategies to address it. I am looking to utilise a public health approach that has been successfully employed in the US and Scotland as a method of violence prevention because it aims to provide the maximum benefit and impact for the largest number of people, it focuses on health and wellbeing of entire populations by drawing on a multi-disciplinary science base. I intend to use a mixed methods approach including social network analysis to identify if/how knife carrying/crime spreads through communities of youth.Research supervisors: Katharine Boyd, Jane Elliott
Email: jw1012@exeter.ac.uk
Jessica Fagin
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Exeter, College of Social Sciences and International StudiesStart date: September 2017
Research topic: Of Meat and Men: Policy, Class and Gendering Heritage in British Slaughterhouses
My research asks what the concealed British slaughterhouse can reveal about class, gender and race as we shift through the legislative transitions of Brexit. Through multisited ethnographic fieldwork, it aims to articulate the effects of policy, regulation and heritage economies as potentially amplifying social divisions, complicating notions of nationhood and perceptions of meat consumption and production. This will focus on issues of masculinity and articulations of craft and manual labour along the British meat commodity chain. Previous fieldwork, as part of my Masters in the Anthropology of Food at SOAS, London, included Smithfield meat market, smallholdings, artisanal producers and butcher shops.Research supervisors: Professor Harry G. West , Dr. Katherine Tyler
Professional memberships/Positions held:
Centre for Rural Policy ResearchEmail: jf500@exeter.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-fagin-81b33514/
Judith Kibuye
SociologyESRC +3
University of Bristol, School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesStart date: September 2022
Research topic: Heterosexual masculinity and femicide in Kenya
My research investigates how heterosexual masculinity not only perpetuates femicide, but also erases the role of heterosexuality from the femicide problem in Kenya. To do this, I focus on how the media and Key government departments frame femicide cases in Kenya and how women’s rights activism to end femicide is dismissed.Research supervisors: Prof. Terrell Carver, Dr Egle Cesnulyte
Email: gw19351@bristol.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judith-kibuye-56b71518b/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KibuyeJudith
Louise Toller
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Exeter, Social Science and International StudiesStart date: September 2014
Research topic: Liminal illness: the experiences of young people with ME.
My interest lies in edges and boundaries, intersections and overlaps, and how we treat the people and things that inhabit these fuzzy, uncertain areas. I am currently exploring these issues in relation to chronic illnesses, especially conditions that are unpredictable, invisible, and/or contested. Such conditions refuse to conform to binary understandings of the world, making them difficult for us to conceptualise, understand, or even believe in.My research focuses on ME/CFS in young people, and the impact that uncertainty and ambiguity has on their lives. This includes its episodic character, issues of in/visibility, dis/ability, and medical/classificatory ambiguity, and social responses.
Research supervisors: Dr Hannah Farrimond, Professor Susan Kelly
Email: lt328@exeter.ac.uk
Maite Ibáñez Bollerhoff
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3)
University of Bristol, School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesStart date: September 2019
Research topic: Female Muslim Refugees’ Social Integration in Local Communities in Germany
Research supervisors: Therese O'Toole, Katharine Charsley
Professional memberships/Positions held:
Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship Migration Mobilities Bristol
Email: m.ibanez.bollerhoff.2019@bristol.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maite-ibáñez-bollerhoff-115661145/
Max Perry
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC +3)
University of Bristol, School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesStart date: October 2020
Research topic: An Ethnography of The Medical Record: How Technology Enacts the Ontology of the Clinic Room.
Drawing on 10 years’ experience working in the NHS my research will develop new understanding of the modalities through which technologies comes to bear on the production of knowledge, practice, and discourse in healthcare. Focusing on the everyday reality/experience of the ‘Medical Record’ and of record keeping I am interested in; (1) how knowledge is produced, recorded, and practiced (by patients, doctors, clinical scientists, nurses, administrators, managers etc.), (2) how technologies used in the construction of the record have a performative role in experiences of the Medical Record, and of how, (3) more broadly, we can/should consider the Medical Record an ontological object.Research supervisors: Dr Sveta Milyaeva, Dr John Downer
Email: fh18214@bristol.ac.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-perry-880960144/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/0404am
Paul Stevens
Sociology
ESRC +3
University of Bristol, SPAISStart date: October 2022
Research topic: Markets and metadata
I’m interested in how social and technological arrangements are brought to bear on the production and dissemination of academic research. Drawing on insights from science and technology studies and economic sociology, my PhD looks at how platformization is affecting the long-established functions and infrastructures of the publishing field, how actors are responding by repositioning themselves in a digitalized market, and how this all makes a difference to the ways in which we collectively imagine, create and use academic texts.Research supervisors: Sveta Milyaeva, John Downer
Email: paul/stevens@bristol.ac.uk
Rosie Fox
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC +3)
University of Exeter, Department of Sociology, Philosophy and AnthropologyStart date: October 2019
Research topic: A qualitative study of primary school children’s perceptions of ‘fundamental British values’
My research explores pupils’ perceptions of ‘fundamental British values’ (fBv) in contrasting primary schools in the South West of England. The aim of my study is to gain an insight into these perceptions and the related concepts of Britishness, citizenship and identities, and contribute to the literature in this area through a multi-method research project foregrounding children’s voices.Research supervisors: Professor Katherine Tyler, Dr Narzanin Massoumi
Email: rf378@exeter.ac.uk
Sarah Fakray
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC 1+3 Award)
University of Bristol, School of Sociology, Politics and International StudiesStart date: September 2016
Research topic: The gendered experiences of destitute irregular migrants in the UK
Research supervisors: Professor Bridget Anderson, Dr Jon Fox
Professional memberships/Positions held:
Migration Research Group; Gender Research Centre; Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and CitizenshipEmail: sf12918@bristol.ac.uk
Sian Moody
Sociology
PhD Researcher in Sociology (ESRC +3.5)
University of Exeter, Social Sciences and International StudiesStart date: September 2020
Research topic: Trouble in the cat’s cradle: entangled practices of care in wild cat conservation
I am researching the reintroduction of the wildcat (Felis silvestris) into Devon and exploring practices of care involved in their conservation. Drawing on ideas around ethical conservation and concepts developed within anthrozoology, I aim to pay attention to the entangled lives of wildcats and their spacio-temporal interactions with each other and other species (including humans). By investigating practices of care in this entangled ‘cat’s-cradle’ I aim to produce a multispecies ethnography that explores what ‘care-full’ conservation is and how it could be used in future conservation practices.Research supervisors: Samantha Hurn, Sarah Crowley
Email: Sam258@exeter.ac.uk
South West Doctoral Training Partnership
