Faculty Member, Department of Sociology
About
I'm mainly interested in the relationship between religion and gender. My doctoral research explored the lives of Catholic sisters in Polish convents and their constructions of 'consecrated femininity'. My second piece of empirical work investigated the complex web of interactions between Polish Catholic migrants and the local churches in Scotland. Most recently I have co-written a book with Steve Bruce, Why Are Women More Religious Than Men? (Oxford UP 2012), in which we critique competing explanations of women's greater religiosity and suggest that the (seemingly universal) gender gap in religious involvement is not the result of biology but is rather the consequence of important social differences —responsibility for managing birth, child-rearing and death, for example, and attitudes to the body, illness and health — over-lapping and reinforcing each other.
My current work focuses on the sociology of the afterlife and on gender differences in approaches to the questions of life and death.
I am also interested in the methodological and ethical aspects of researching religion. In particular, I am concerned with the issues of covert versus overt fieldwork, 'uncomfortable' research relationships, and the trouble with reflexivity.
Contact Information
| Homepage: | http://www.abdn.ac.uk/socsci/staff/details.php?id= |
