Dr Maddie Breeze

Lecturer in Sociology & Social Policy

Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology Stirling

Dr Maddie Breeze

Contact details

About me

I joined the department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at Stirling as a Lecturer in Sociology & Social Policy in March 2024. I've been lecturing in universities since 2010, including in various academic roles in Sociology and Education at Queen Margaret University, the University of Strathclyde, Universidade de Lisboa, and the University of Edinburgh.

I teach, research, and conduct scholarship in queer feminist sociology, across the sociology of education (especially the critical sociology of higher education and academic work) and the sociology of emotions (especially the 'bad feelings' that circulate in education contexts). My work addresses social inequalities associated with gender, sexuality and their intersections, exploring how these are lived, resisted and reconfigured. This work is driven by a concern with queer feminist agency and collective action, including in HE itself, so prioritises collaborative, creative methods and pedagogies and a takes a critically reflexive approach to academic practices. I'm interested in why universities are the way they are and how they might be otherwise.

At the moment I am:

  • Working on QUEER CARES a research project investigating LGBTQ+ education workers' experiences of unpaid caring responsibilities since COVID-19.
  • Continuing to write about feeling like an imposter in HE as social, political, public and potentially as a site of agency and collective political action in the unequal university.
  • Continuing to write about queer feminist approaches to academic work.

I hold a PhD in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh (2014), a creative ethnography of women's roller derby. My first monograph 'Seriousness and Women's Roller Derby : Gender, Organization, and Ambivalence' won the 2016 British Sociological Association Phillip Abram's Memorial Prize for the best first book in Sociology that year.

I am accepting applications for PhD supervision and am excited about doctoral projects investigating any aspect of gender and sexuality. Please get in touch if you'd like to discuss your proposal. For instance, currently I am supervising doctoral research about free period product provision (Kate Molyneaux), gender neutral theyby parenting (Milo Chestnut), and autistic/queer access to healthcare (Samantha McDowell).

Research interests and recognised specialisms in:

  • Queer feminist sociology

  • Social inequalities especially gender, sexuality and their intersections

  • Sociology of education, especially higher education

  • Imposter 'syndrome' and bad/ugly feelings

  • Care, especially unpaid care work and the politics of social reproduction

  • Creative, ethnographic, participatory and 'insider' methods

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Research themes