My research interests centre on the social reproduction of inequality and the role of our social ties and connections in this process. I have three current projects exploring these issues in different ways:

• Social Ties: Sociology after the "End of the Social" (to be published with Palgrave)
• "Who do you think they were?" Exploring Family History
• Visible Inequalities

Social Ties: sociology after the ‘end of the social’

Is who we are shaped by who we know?  Social Ties looks at how social connectedness shapes our behaviour, and forges our view of the world and our sense of self.  Drawing on the relational and network ‘turn’ in social analysis, the book explores attempts to re-construct the ‘sociological imagination’ after the ‘deconstruction of the social’.  The book introduces these debates, and critically explores frameworks for contemporary social theorising which rest on the concept of social ties and relationality.

'Who do you think they were?' Exploring Family History

• A qualitative study of family historians, the 'Who do you think they were?' project explores how people make sense of the occupational and status information they collect about their ancestors. This project looks at the visibility of inequality in everyday accounts of social life.
• The research examines how family historians form a sense of the social position of their ancestors, in the context of long-term social change which potentially destabilises the meaning of key markers (occupation, education or material possessions) of social position at different points in time.  What social comparisons do family historians make to establish social location in their family tree at different time-points?
• A key theme to emerge from this research project is the varying visibility of inequality in everyday accounts of social life, depending on the sorts of social comparison that people undertake, as part of different cultural contexts and activities.

Visible inequalities

• My personal research agenda is to carry forward this theme of the visibility of inequality.  What is the nature of everyday social comparison and how does it affect perceptions and understandings of inequality?
• Since inequality is an inherently relational concept, we must ask which social comparisons matter, both in establishing people’s sense of their relative position and in their perceptions of wider inequalities.  
• When and how do people compare, and how such comparisons are affected by social change and affluence, the nature of people’s social contacts and networks, and the context of different kinds of social practices.