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Before joining The Open University in 1999, I was a Senior Research Officer at the ESRC Qualitative Data Archival Resource Centre (Qualidata, University of Essex). I have also taught both sociology and social history courses in the Department of Sociology, University of Essex and the School of Community Health and Social Studies, Anglia Polytechnic University.

I am a Co-Director (with Dr Jacqui Gabb) of the Families, Relationships and Communities Programme which is part of The Open University's Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG).

I am an editorial board member of Red Feather: An International Journal of Children's Visual Culture.

Qualifications

PhD Sociology/Social History (Essex); MA Sociology (Essex); BA (Hons) Literature and Sociology (Essex)

Professional affiliations

Member of Social History Society
Member of Women's History Network
Member of British Sociological Association
Member of European Sociological Association

Course development and teaching

I have been involved in the development and/or presentation of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the Faculty of Social Sciences, including European Social Policy (D862), Personal lives and social policy (DD305) and Social Psychology: critical perspectives on self and others (DD307).

Research interests

My principal research interests fall into three areas. The first is concerned with social policy, welfare practices and popular culture in 20th century Britain and the ways in which problematized and/or silenced family relationships have been understood and portrayed. I am particularly interested in the representation of these relationships in film and photography. My current research in this area is concentrated upon representations of missing children in mid-twentieth century British film and what these reveal about the meanings of childhood, motherhood and gender relations in this period.

The second strand brings my interests in visual sources and visual methodologies into the present. This research examines the possibilities of participatory visual research for exploring everyday experiences of childhood and community life as well as theoretical questions about interpretation, meaning-making and the emotional power of the visual medium. These questions are also concerned with the value of visual resources as 'evidence' in the policy arena and their potential for addressing and challenging the nature and experiences of social inequalities. This was the framework for the ESRC Seminar Series: Visual Dialogues: New Agendas in Inequalities Research (RES-451-26-0722) which I recently completed with Dr Helen Lomax, Prof Gillian Rose and Lisa Whiting.

The third area of my interests is in the contemporary meanings and experiences of policy, personal relationships and popular culture. This work is at the centre of an ESRC funded project, Enduring Love? Couple relationships in Contemporary Britain (RES-063-23-3056), led by myself and Dr Jacqui Gabb and supported by Dr Martina Klett-Davies and Dr Tam Sanger. The project is a mixed methods investigation into long-term couple relationships and we will be examining changes and continuities in heterosexual and same-sex couple relationships over the past thirty years. We are particularly interested in what helps people sustain relationships and how cultural myths, such as finding 'the one' and living 'happily-ever-after', are understood and reconciled by adult couples whose own relationships may fall short of these romantic ideals.

PhD supervision

Thierry Chessum: Love's torments: ageing masculinity and long-term relationships.

Danielle Pearson: The trials, tribulations and celebrations of long term same-sex partner relationships (sponsored by Relate).

Janet Underwood: Just a bunch of grapes? Meanings, experiences and practices of hospital visiting.

Richenda Gambles: Creating hard-working, responsible parents: A New Labour structure of feeling? (Thesis awarded 2012).

Andrew Wilkins: Active citizenship and parental choice: Producing citizen consumers (Thesis awarded 2009).

I welcome applications for PhD study in any area connected to my research interests.

Recent publications

A selection of my research publications can be viewed at The Open University's Open Research Online.

Guest Editor of Journal Special Issue

Fink, J. and Lomax, H. (eds) (2012) Images and Inequalities: Implications for Policy and Research, Critical Social Policy, Themed Issue, 32 (1).

Books

Fink, J. and Lundqvist, Å. (eds) (2010) Changing Relations of Welfare: Family, Gender and Migration in Britain and Scandinavia, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Fink, J. and Lundqvist, Å. (eds) (2009) Välfärd, Genus och Familj, Malmö: Liber.

Fink, J. (ed.) (2004) Care: Personal Lives and Social Policy, Bristol: The Policy Press.

Fink, J., Lewis, G. and Clarke, J. (eds) (2001) Rethinking European Welfare, London: Sage.

Davidoff, L., Doolittle, M. Fink, J. and Holden, K. (1999) The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830-1960, London: Longman.

Chapters in books

Fink, J. (forthcoming 2012) 'Representing family troubles through the 20th century', in Ribbens McCarthy, J., Hooper, C.A. and Gillies, V. (eds.) Family Troubles? Exploring Changes and Challenges in the Family Lives of Children and Young People. Bristol: Policy Press.

Fink, J. (2012) "'They don't really care what happens to me': divorce, family life and children's emotional worlds in 1950s' British cinema", in Cvetkovic, V. and Olsen, D. (eds) Fleeting Images: Portrayals of Children in Popular Culture, New York: Lexington Books, pp 153-169.

Fink, J. and Holden, K. (2010) 'Paradoxes of gender and marital status in mid-twentieth century British welfare' in Fink, J. and Lundqvist, Å. (eds) Changing Relations of Welfare: Family, Gender and Migration in Britain and Scandinavia, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Clarke, J. and Fink, J. (2008) 'Unsettled attachments: National identity, citizenship and migration' in Oorschot, W., Opielka, M., and Pfau-Effinger, B. (eds) Culture and Welfare State: Values and Social Policy in Comparative Perspective, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Fink, J. (2006) 'Poverty, welfare and inequalities' in Addison, P. and Jones, H. (eds) A Companion to Contemporary Britain: 1939-2000, Oxford: Blackwell.

Corti, L. Thompson, P. and Fink, J. (2004) 'Preserving, sharing and reusing data from qualitative research: methods and strategies' in Cassell, C. and Symon, G. (eds) Essential Guide to Qualitative Methods in Organisational Research, London: Sage.

Fink, J. (2004) 'Questions of care' in Fink, J. (ed.) Care: Personal Lives and Social Policy, Bristol: The Policy Press.

Lewis, G. and Fink, J. (2004) '"All that heaven allows": The worker-citizen in the post-war welfare state' in Lewis, G. (ed.) Citizenship: Personal Lives and Social Policy, Bristol: The Policy Press.

Journal articles

Fink, J. (2012) 'Questions of innocence and guilt: Child abduction and the representation of mothers in post-war British cinema' in Families, Relationships and Societies, 1 (2) 193-208.

Fink, J. (2012) 'Walking the neighbourhood, seeing the small details of community life: reflections from a photography walking tour' Critical Social Policy, 32 (1) 31-50.

Lomax, H.; Fink, J.; Singh, N and High, C. (2011) 'The politics of performance: methodological challenges of researching children's experiences of childhood through the lens of participatory video' International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 14 (3) 231-243.

Fink, J., de Jong, A. and Langan, M. (2011) 'New challenges or different opportunities? Voluntary adoption agencies and the shifting terrain of childcare services', Voluntary Sector Review, 2 (2) 177-191.

Fink, J. (2011) 'For better or for worse? The dilemmas of unmarried motherhood in popular mid-twentieth century British film and fiction', Women's History Review, 20 (1) 145-60.

Lomax, H. and Fink, J. (2010) 'Interpreting images of motherhood: the contexts and dynamics of collective viewing' in Sociological Research Online, Vol 15, Issue 3, August. Available from: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/3/2.html (Accessed 19 November 2012). Shortlisted for Sage Prize for Innovation and/or Excellence (2010).

Fink, J. (2009) 'The responsibilities of looking and seeing: broken homes and troubled childhoods in 1950s' British cinema' in Cinemascope, Issue 13, July-December.

Fink, J. (2008) 'Inside a hall of mirrors: residential care and the shifting constructions of childhood in mid-twentieth century Britain' in Paedagogica Historica, Vol 44, No 3, pp. 287-307.

Fink, J. (2007) 'Children of Empire: the alignments of church, state and family in the creation of mobile children' in Cultural Studies, Vol 21, No 6, pp. 847-865.

Fink, J. (2002) 'Private lives, public issues: moral panics and "the family" in 20th century Britain' in Journal for the Study of British Cultures, Vol 9/2, pp. 135-148.

Fink, J. (2002) ' Europe's cold shoulder: migration and the constraints of welfare in Fortress Europe' in Soundings, Issue 21, pp. 119-132.

Charlesworth, J. and Fink, J. (2001) 'Historians and social science research data', History Workshop Journal, Issue 51, pp.206-219.

Davidoff, L., Doolittle, M., Fink, J. and Holden, K. (2000) 'Das paradox de familie in historischen context', Historische und Anthropologie: Kultur, Gesellschaft, Alltag, 8, 3, pp. 358-382.

Fink, J. (2000) 'Natural mothers, putative fathers and innocent children: the regulation and definition of familial relationships outside marriage in postwar England, The Journal of Family History, Vol 25, No 2, pp. 178-195.

Fink, J. and Holden, K. (1999) 'Pictures from the margins of marriage: representations of spinsters and single mothers in the Victorian novel, interwar Hollywood melodrama and British films of the 1950s and 60s' Gender and History, Vol 11, No 2, pp. 233-255.

A repository of research publications and other research outputs can be viewed at The Open University's Open Research Online.

Last updated: 19 November 2012