SSP Spotlight Series: digitally accessible content
Claiming space: Young voices in disability activism
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Video transcription:
What motivates young disabled people to engage in activism and what stops them from participating?
My name is Miro Griffiths, I'm a Disability Studies Scholar in the School of Sociology and Social policy at the University of Leeds.
My problem is exploring how do young, disabled people engage in activism and social movements. There's been a lot of concern about the participation of young people generally, in activism and social movements and civil society organisations, and this is particularly noticeable when it comes to marginalised communities, such as disabled people. So I wanted to understand, how do we improve young disabled people's participation and ensure that they feel valued able to participate and able to influence the direction and travel of activism and resistance.
I created a four stage project that would explore the ideas and perspectives and experiences of activism from young disabled people's lives. This was a four phase project. Firstly, a set of surveys to capture people's general experiences. Then, semi-structured interviews to encounter their experiences or barriers, their ideas for improving participation and where do they go to in order to find more information about activism.
Then we created Future Laboratory workshops. This was an opportunity to bring young disabled activists together online and offline to find out, what are their imaginings for realising accessible and inclusive societies? And finally, we produced a documentary film to explore all the issues within the project.
The project identified five levels of interest around disability youth activism. Firstly, there was the reasons for participating, and this was particularly around raising the awareness of building
towards accessible and inclusive societies. Then there were issues around barriers. So what stops young disabled people from participating, issues around time, accessibility and making sure established individuals in movements give opportunities for young disabled people to participate.
There were issues around improving participation, that was about gaining knowledge around activism and also creating accessible spaces. There was also questions around practices of activism. So some were interested in incremental change through negotiations. Others were interested in radical change, such as protesting and civil disobedience.
And finally it was the future of activism. Where do we go next? And for many activists, they wanted to use their participation in activism to think differently about the world for everybody.
So use disability activism to imagine a better world for all and ensure all can participate within activism.
Domestic ideals: feminism and the politics of austerity
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What can celebrities and popular culture tell us about feminism and austerity in the UK?
I'm Dr Jess Martin, I'm a Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.
So my most recent book started with a tension that I perceived between this rise in visibility of this spectacular mainstream feminism, which was happening at the same time that lives were getting materially worse for women in the UK after 15 years of austerity.
At the same time as these gendered inequalities were rising, there was also an increased visibility of the domestic space and a rise in what we might think of as traditionally feminine cultures and practices, and these practices crystallised around the cultural figure of the housewife or the tradwife.
These cultural figures were explicitly linked to nationhood and were entrenched in nostalgic discourses. So in the book, I argue that this convergence of femininity and nostalgia has produced new discourses of performative thrift, of aspirational domesticity, and of feminised labour, all of which have been used by successive governments to justify austerity policy in the UK.
So I conceptualise what I term austerity celebrities. These are public figures who have forged their visibility through articulations with crisis culture. Now, people might dismiss the study of celebrity as trivial, but actually, these celebrities are significant cultural and symbolic resources for different political agendas. They're often doing significant ideological and cultural work in securing and contesting dominant ideas around nationhood, feminism, and welfare imaginaries.
Now, the kinds of feminism that we might associate with economic boom times, so neoliberal feminism or post-feminism, have actually adapted to times of crisis, and they've done this through forming new entanglements with explicitly feminist discourses and also gendered notions of thrift, frugality and morality.
So unfortunately, the austerity legacy is here to stay in the UK, both in terms of policy, culture, and on ideological terms, and this has intensified implications for vulnerable groups. It's therefore important that we as sociologists come to gain a sense of how consent for and resistance against these inequalities happens across popular culture.
This work speaks to questions thatI'm grappling with in my new research around the elasticity of the concept of feminism, and particularly how feminism might be used to wield power by elite groups in elite social spaces. This power comes to be exercised in ways which are not benign and can perpetuate exclusions and inequalities for women.
Reclaiming belonging: Queer performance and African futures
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How are queer Black artists in South Africa using performance to challenge exclusion and to imagine new futures?
My name's Megan Robertson, I'm a Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.
My research is broadly interested in LGBTIQ+ rights in Africa and specifically in South Africa. On the continent, there is a pervasive and amplified discourse that being queer or identifying as LGBTIQ+ is un-African and un-Christian. In South Africa, we are not immune from that type of discourse, despite the progressive constitutional rights and protections that is enshrined in law.
Yet, despite that, there is a lot of pushback. It's not gone unchallenged, these discourses and beliefs, specifically the religious and cultural aspects that support some of those beliefs are being challenged more and more by  LGBTIQ+ people on the continent and in South Africa. And the creative arts really has been a prime site where this is happening and where visibility is pushing back against those discourses. And so my research is really interested in looking at those stories and how they reimagine ways of being queer in Africa.
So in my research project, I'm really interested in the ways in which queer performing Black artists in Cape Town, South Africa negotiate in their art and in their lives, religion and their queer sexuality. So far I've worked with a few artists in Cape Town, specifically Enrico Hartzenberg, Dope Saint Jude and Marc Lottering.
And in speaking to all of them, I'm really interested in how their work amplifies their own lived realities, negotiating religion and their sexuality, but also how it produces particular affects, and they engage with their audience in producing those affects. So whether it's joy or ,horror or anger, or mourning and grief, how through those emotions, they're able to reflect particular narratives of being queer and Black in South Africa and in Cape Town.
I think what my work is doing is highlighting the difference that participants are making through their work. And one of those things is challenging nationalistic, patriarchal, harmful religious narratives or cultural narratives of their queerness, of their identity, of their bodies. And I think they do that really powerfully in their performances.
So what my project really hopes to do is to amplify the work that they do to, take a pedagogical approach to talking with them and asking artists to think more seriously about the role that they do play in nation building, in being able to change people's understandings and ideas of what it means to be African and what it means to be Black and what it means to be queer in a so-called post-apartheid South Africa.
Democratizing finance: Crowdfunding for local climate action
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How could an investment of just five pounds contribute towards the decarbonisation of your local community?
I'm Mark Davis, Professor of Economic Sociology in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.
The main challenge that the research was seeking to address was how to support UK councils in delivering on their climate emergency plans. Two thirds of UK councils had declared a climate emergency, and they'd done so in the context of successive government administrations pursuing programmes of fiscal constraint and austerity.
The real benefit of UK councils and combined authorities in the context of climate breakdown.
is that these are the anchor institutions within our local communities responsible for delivering the infrastructure projects to meet our decarbonisation targets.
Having won a small grant from Friends Provident Foundation to better understand the UK crowdfunding sector, I next worked with colleagues at Cambridge University and the Financial Conduct Authority to improve protections for new investors in crowdfunding markets. The Financing for Society Project allowed me to build a research team that included Abundance Investment, Local Partnerships, and three UK councils.
Together we worked with business, industry, legal and professional service firms do due diligence on a range of different crowdfunding models. We also led a series of focus groups with local residents to explore their attitudes towards their council in the context of climate breakdown.
The outcome of the project was the co-creation of a new form of investment-based crowdfunding for UK councils that we called Community Municipal Investments, or CMIs. The CMI model was first brought to market wrapped as local climate bonds in July 2020, with a minimum investment level of just £5 to make it as socially inclusive as possible.
By Spring 2025, thanks to retail and institutional investment, the model has managed to raise £30million for investment into place-based net zero projects. Given the success of the CMI model so far, we're clearly working to continue to scale that to deliver more investment
into net zero projects right across the country, hopefully helping more councils to deliver on their climate emergency plans.
The next phase of research that I'll be leading here at the university is to explore the non-financial benefits of the model within our local communities. This includes changing attitudes between the public and their local council in the context of climate breakdown, as well as continuing to demonstrate the power of money for delivering a more democratic form of finance.
Measuring success: Shaping smarter policies
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I'm Dr Ana Manzano, Associate Professor in Public Policy, working in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.
In my fellowship funded by UK Research and Innovation, I'm working with the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland, helping them to measure the impact of the wide range of policies in economic and green growth, employment skills, further and higher education, trade, and many more.
By building on the great work that the Department is already doing, we're helping them to make sure that the impact of the policies is evidence-based and future decisions can be made. The project focuses on creating practical and consistent ways of evaluating government policy.
By working closely with policy makers, creating tools and strategies that are grounded in the real needs of economic policy and specific challenges, we are making sure that they are more efficient. We are co-developing a monitoring and evaluation strategy and advising teams on the best methods to use to evaluate the programmes and the policy and overall enhancing the departmental staff evaluation skills.
One of the most exciting aspects of this project is its collaborative nature. By working hand in hand with government officials, we're making sure that we are designing together something that is not only useful, but is made to their specific and unique needs as a devolved administration and also as a wide ranged Department for the Economy.
Ultimately, this fellowship is about helping the Department for the Economy to measure success in a way that creates stronger outcomes, more inclusive and sustainable policies, so we can improve the lives of people as promised.
Closing the gap: Fairer working lives for young women
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I'm Kim Allen and I'm a Professor in Youth and Culture in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.
Despite the fact that young women are achieving in education, some cases outperforming men and entering the workforce in ever higher numbers, gender inequalities persist. This includes occupational segregation and a gender pay gap. Young women are also more likely to be in insecure and low paid employment.
In the past, explanations of these inequalities have tended to focus on the motherhood penalty, so the impact of having children on women's career progression. Other explanations have focused on young girls' aspirations and the educational choices that they make that lead them into particular sectors. What's been given less attention is young women's very earliest experiences of work, including those experiences of work that they accrue before they formally transition from education.
Many young people undertake paid work whilst they're still in school, college or university, for example, as babysitters, as retail assistants or as waitresses in bars and cafes. And the current cost of living crisis is making working while studying ever more commonplace and necessary. However, we still know very little about the nature of this work or how it might impact on young people's aspirations and their future outcomes.
Our current research project is trying to address this gap. So funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and conducted along with other researchers at the University of Leeds, University of Manchester and City St. George's University of London, we're using a range of methods to explore the nature and impact of young women's earliest experiences of work.
This includes analysing large national data sets like the Labour Force Survey. We're also doing interviews with young women who have left education and work in feminised sectors such as teaching, care, fashion and beauty about their experiences of work and their hopes for the future.
We're also collaborating with a range of stakeholders, including the charity the Young Women's Trust, and we have a young women's advisory group to make sure that their voices are central to the research and that the research really makes a difference to young women's lives.
We're already having an impact on government policy. For example, we recently submitted evidence to the Low Pay Commission to advocate for higher wages for young workers, and we're developing toolkits and resources for employers and for young women to help tackle workplace discrimination and help young women to assert their rights in the workplace.
This project aims to create long lasting change by tackling workplace inequalities and empowering the next generation to achieve fairer and more fulfilling working lives.
Feeding the nation: Seasonal migrant workers and food security
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[ROXANA] Hi, I'm Dr Roxana Barbulescu. I'm an Associate Professor in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.
Who are the people behind our food? In the UK, 90% of the workers who harvest fresh fruit and veg are seasonal migrant workers. Feeding the Nation is a research project in collaboration with Professor Carlos Vargas-Silva at the University of Oxford, and funded by the ESRC.
It examines the vital role of seasonal workers and farming in supporting our food system. It focuses on the lived experiences of migrant and farmers, specifically fair recruitment, retention and fostering a sense of belonging under temporary visa schemes whilst at the same time studying innovative solutions to protect the thriving UK farming sector.
Labour shortages are a big issue in food and farming affecting migrants, farming communities and rural economies more broadly. This research highlights these challenges while looking for ways to recruit fairly, protect them from exploitation and improve worker welfare. This aims to protect locally grown fruit and veg and make farming more sustainable in the long run.
[BETHANY] Hi, my name is Dr Bethany Robertson, and I'm a Lecturer in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.
This project gathered new data by conducting interviews, surveys and even photo diaries with participants. Firstly, we understood the experiences of seasonal migrant farm workers, such as by understanding their reasons for working in the UK, their working conditions and even their future plans about whether they wish to return in the next year. Secondly, farmers shared their challenges with us, for example, how they find and retain seasonal farm workers, and also how they're adapting to changing times.
This project was innovative in not only tackling the challenges faced by seasonal migrant farm workers, but also farmers and how these challenges are also prompted by changes in the weather, seasons, and rural communities.
[ROXANA] To create real change, we partnered with governmental organisations such as Defra and the Food Standards Agency. We've also teamed up with the charity, New Europeans UK to create a multilingual toolkit that will empower migrants about their rights in the UK. Then, to reach a wider audience we've collaborated with artists and musicians. Ink and watercolour illustrations were exhibited at the Museum of English Rural Life, and a co-produced folk song premiered at the Sidmouth Folk Festival and was broadcast on BBC.
This groundbreaking project gives seasonal migrant workers a voice, it highlights their contribution to feeding the nation and offer solutions for a fairer food system.
Shaping narratives: trans athletes and media representation
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Why have trans athletes become such a visible focus in debates about fairness, rights and inclusion?
Hi, I'm Yen Nee Wong, and I'm a Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy in the University of Leeds.
Public and policy debates about trans rights have become increasingly polarised in the UK and the US. And sports have emerged as a highly visible field where a lot of these conflicts are being played out. Media coverage on trans participation in sports is often framed around contested ideas on fairness, biology and risk.
However, it's less clear how consistently these narratives emerge, how they shift across time, and whether and how they connect to wider cultural and political debates around gender, risk and social change. And the potential consequences of these framings on public understanding as well as policy decisions with very real consequences for trans people's access to sports and public life.
My research examines media representations of trans athletes in the UK and US news media between 2014 to 2025. Using computational methods, I trace how these narratives shift across time and how they connect to wider political debates as well as major cultural moments in gender wars.
My study also critically examines the computational methods used to study media. While data-driven tools can identify patterns in large amounts of information, they may also oversimplify lived experience and exclude marginalised voices. My research examines how these methods can be used in a way that is more ethical, reflective and inclusive.
This work draws on my wider body of research in embodiment, LGBTQ+ identities, and media representation, drawing on a queer trans feminist lens to explore how bodies are being contested, judged and categorised and understood in public culture.
By critically engaging with both news media narratives as well as the methods used to study them, my study highlights how the exclusion of trans people are reproduced through journalism, politics and research itself. I seek to envision community-centred computational methods that moves beyond classification and extraction and to support more accountable media representations of trans lives in all their richness, complexities, and diversities.
Ultimately, I seek to support more ethical reporting and more inclusive ways of understanding trans lives.