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PROFESSOR CHRISTINA HUGHES
I am a Professor of Women and Gender and, currently, Chair of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Head of Department, Sociology, University of Warwick. Previously I have taught and undertaken research at the University of Warwick in the Centre for Education, Development, Appraisal and Research (CEDAR), the Department of Applied Social Studies and the Department of Continuing Education. I have also worked for the Open University.
For my PhD I undertook an ethnographic study of stepmotherhood and yet my early career took me into researching school and adult education. This employment trajectory framed my developing research interests through a focus on the theoretical and conceptual connections of employment, education and family in women's lives. This led to two major publications (Women's Contemporary Lives: Within and Beyond the Mirror, London, Routledge, 2002; and Key Concepts in Feminist Theory and Research [or alternative link], London, Sage, 2002).
I then developed this work by focussing on conceptual meanings and their associated theoretical frameworks. In this respect, I have published the following:
- (2007) The Equality of Social Envies, Sociology, 41(2)
- (2007) The Pleasures of Learning at Work: Phenomenology and Foucault Compared, British Journal of Sociology of Education
- (2007) Revisiting Feminist Appropriations of Social Capital, in T Lovell (ed) (Mis)Recognition, Social Inequality and Social Justice, London, Routledge (with Loraine Blaxter).
My current interests are concerned with issues of affect, and in particular the affects of pleasure. This work has developed into considerations of the importance of jouissance in learning and is now taking me into a study of the intra-actions of the social, cultural, neurological and biological. Here I have drawn on data arising from a study of artisan entrepreneurs with which I have been engaged in recent years.
I have also had the privilege of working with colleagues to produce two special editions of well respected journals that focus on feminist concerns. In conjunction with an ESRC Seminar Series 'Lifelong Learning and Gender' of which I was a co-convenor, I have co-edited a special edition of the British Educational Research Journal (32(5) with Loraine Blaxter, Jacky Brine and Sue Jackson). The editorial notes the continuing (and relative) absence of gender concerns within the field of lifelong learning but also notes how assumptions of 'race' continue to neglect aspects of Whiteness that are so relevant to a contemporary analysis:
- (2006) Gender, class and ‘race’ in lifelong learning: policy and practice in the UK and EU, British Educational Research Journal, 32(5): 643-648
With colleagues Pam Cotterill and Gayle Letherby, I have also had the pleasure to bring together an international collection of essays concerned with pedagogy and feminist politics in the academy. The collection explores the problematic of transgression and, as the Editorial (cited below) indicates, 'attempts to straddle the polarities of debate and empirical reserach that, on the one hand, evidences how gender relations in the academy continue to pose significant problems for women and men committed to the pursuit of social justice, and yet, on the other hand, testifies not only to a growth but a consolidation of women's presence and women's ways of being in insitutions of higher education':
- (2006) Transgressions and Gender in Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, 31(4): 403-406 (with Pam Cotterill and Gayle Letherby)
In addition I have longstanding interests in the development of research methodologies. Whilst I would describe my interests here as largely concerned with qualitative approaches, recent work has focused on the relationship beween feminism and quantitative methods. To this end, the following work is being produced:
- (2010) Feminism Counts: Quantitative Methods and Researching Gender, International Journal of Social Research Methodology (with Rachel Cohen)
- Hughes, C and Cohen, R (2010) Feminists Really Do Count: The Complexity of Feminist Methodologies, International Journal of Social Research Methodology
- Cohen, R, Hughes, C and Lampard R (2009) Does Feminism Count? An Analysis of Feminist Methodological Practice, Paper given at Feminist Research Methods Conference, University of Stockholm, 4-6 February, 2009(http://www.kvinfo.su.se/femmet09/papers/pdf/Cohen_Hughes_Lampard_revised.pdf
I have also edited a text on the processes of dissemination in qualitative research (Disseminating Qualitative Research in Educational Settings: A Critical Introduction, Buckingham, Open University Press, 2003). Further, the fourth edition of the best selling text How to Research [or alternative link] (2010, Maidenhead, Open University Press) (with colleagues Loraine Blaxter and Malcolm Tight) is now in press.
I was founding co-chair of the Gender and Education Association, co-editor of Gender and Education from 1995-2001 and a member of the Board of Sociological Research On-Line (2005-8). I remain on the Board of Gender, Work and Organisation.
You can e-mail me at: Christina.Hughes@warwick.ac.uk
