RESEARCH PROFILE

Since completing my PhD I have taught and researched in the fields of sociology, social policy and lifelong learning.My research interests focus on the following. First they are concerned with the development of feminist theory and feminist politics. Here I have been working on how we can understand the meanings of employment, education and family in women's lives. In this I have explored a number of everyday phrases- women have made it, best of both worlds, women are caring, having it all and doing it all - and I have sought to develop understandings of how the discursive meanings associated with these phrases shape the possibilities and practices of women's lives. For example, we can understand aspects of caring womanhood through the curricula of particular courses of study (training to be a nurse would be a classic case), through expectations on women in the workplace (undertaking, for example, pastoral roles or being strongly associated with relational andinterpersonal skills) and, of course, in family life where mothers continue to have primary responsibility for childcare. This work has taken me more fully into explorations of conceptual meanings and their associated theoretical frameworks. I am, for example, particularly concerned to develop forms of conceptual literacy through which we come to understand that how we theorise matters. This is because feminism has never simply been about adding to or adopting a previous body of knowledge. Feminist concerns over meaning have arisen because of the implications for what might become or what might be created if particular meanings are taken up. Thus, we need to ask what the implications are of different theoretical and conceptual stances. My work here has explored the concepts of equality, difference, choice, experience and care. More recently I have worked on the concepts of social capital, pleasure and social envies. Second my research has been concerned with the development of qualitative methodologies, although more recently this has taken a more feminist quantitative turn. In this respect I have recently been researching the dissemination of qualitative research. I have been particularly interested in what, and who, gets heard and why. Again, I bring a feminist and political lens to this work as I seek to promote an 'informed practice' in the field of dissemination. Such informed practice takes account of the emotional realm of dissemination, the ethics of representation;and the challenge of 'post' (postmodernism, postcolonialism, poststructuralism) epistemological thought. < My recent publications include:Women's Contemporary Lives: Within and Beyond the Mirror, (2002, London, Routledge); Key Concepts in Feminist Theory and Research, (2002, London, Sage) and Disseminating Qualitative Research (2003, Buckingham, Open University Press). In addition, with colleagues Loraine Blaxter and Malcolm Tight, I am currently completing the fourth edition of the bestselling text How to Research.

BACKGROUND

EDUCATION PROFILE

Courses Taught

• Contemporary Feminist Theory (MA Module)
  The course explores the trajectory of feminist theory paying particular attention to the following issues: the significance and impact of post-epistemologies in respect of post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism; Global feminisms; Difference as a central concept within feminist thought; Hetero/sexuality; ?Race? and Whiteness; Sex/gender distinctions and debates; Cultural feminism, war and peace; The 'internationalisation' of liberal feminism.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Christina Hughes, Viv Barnes, Lynn Clouder, Judy Purkis, Jackie Pritchard (2009) 'Deconstructing Dissemination: Dissemination as Qualitative Research' in Representing Ethnography (2008), Editors: P Atkinson and S Delamont, London: Sage
• Professor Christina L Hughes, Maud Perrier Anne-Marie Kramer, (2009) 'Plaisir, Jouissance and Other Forms of Pleasure: Exploring the Intellectual Development of the Student' in Academic Futures: Inquiries into Higher Education and Pedagogy, Editors: Virginia King, Frances Deepwell, Lynn Clouder and Christine Broughan, Cambridge: CSP
• Hughes, C (2007) 'The Equality of Social Envies' Sociology 41 (2), 347 - 363 (0038-0385)
• Hughes, Christina (2007) 'Rethinking Research' British Journal Of Sociology Of Education 28 (6), 823 - 831 (0142-5692)
• Hughes C (2007) 'The Pleasures of Learning at Work: Foucault and Phenomenology Compared' British Journal Of Sociology Of Education 28 (3), (0142-5692)

Further Publications