About the programme

Our focus is the diverse ways in which people live and experience their personal lives and relationships. We take a comprehensive view, which includes material and socio-cultural contexts and the emotional dynamics of families, relationships and communities. 

The programme is interdisciplinary in approach and considers notions of families, personal relationships, households and communities, whilst also recognising their continuing significance at political, policy and personal levels.

The theoretical focus is wide ranging encompassing: personal relationships, inter-subjectivity, relationality, autonomy and connectedness care, emotion, memory and representations power, control and resources legislation, policy-making and welfare practice.

Our research is clustered under seven key themes, each of which hosts specific projects:

• Children and childhood: An investigation into what impacts on children’s lives 
• Families, transnationalism and mobilities: An exploration of how families are constituted and lived across transnational borders 
• Family troubles?: A review of the contested terrain between ‘normal’ family troubles and troubled and troubling families 
• Gender, households and work: An examination of what goes on within households in terms of resource allocation, decision-making processes and tasks of everyday living 
• Intimate relationships: An examination of the experience, meanings, social policy and cultural mediations of relationships between adult couples 
• Parenthood: An investigation into the increasingly diverse family formations in contemporary society 
• Social Relations of Neighbourhoods: An exploration of the issues associated with social inclusion/exclusion, community participation and community cohesion

Videos presenting these strands are available here.

Programme Directors

Jacqui Gabb and Janet Fink