Dr Maddie Breeze

I joined the Sociology & Public Sociology team as Senior Lecturer in 2022. I have previously worked as Chancellor's Fellow in Education at the University of Strathclyde, as Lecturer in Public Sociology at QMU, as a researcher in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, and as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Lisbon. My PhD in Sociology was awarded by the University of Edinburgh in 2014.

My book Seriousness in Women's Roller Derby: Gender, Organisation, and Ambivalence (2015) was awarded the 2016 British Sociological Association Philip Abram's Memorial Prize, and shortlisted for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport annual prize in the same year. My second book Feminist Repetitions in Higher Education: Interrupting Career Categories is co-authored with Prof Yvette Taylor and published in 2020. With Dr Michelle Addison and Prof Yvette Taylor I edited The Palgrave Handbook of Imposter Syndrome in Higher Education (2022).

I currently serve on the editorial board of Teaching in Higher Education, and coordinate the British Sociological Association Gender Study Group.

I am interested in the sociology of gender, sexuality, and intersecting inequalities in higher education, among students and workers, and particularly in how stratification and exclusion are reproduced and can be challenged.

I use qualitative, ethnographic, participatory and creative methods, and research and publish widely across these areas, in both solo and collaborative projects. For instance, investigations of imposter syndrome as a public feeling, queer feminist education, feminist collaborations, and widening participation programmes. 

I am currently investigating LGBTQ+ Cares and Higher Education, exploring LGBTQ+ people’s experiences of unpaid care work during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Active research interests:

• Feminist sociology
• Queer feminism
• Sociology of education
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Care
• Widening participation

Research Methods:

• Qualitative methodology
• Ethnography
• Autoethnography, autobiography, auto-theory, insider reserch
• Qualitative interviews
• Creative methods e.g. film-making
• Participatory methodologies

Maddie is also a full member of the Centre for Applied Social Science.

Dr Maddie Breeze research publications and outputs (QMU eResearch profile)

I currently teach The Sociological Imagination (level one undergraduate), Engaged Sociology (level two undergraduate) and supervise undergraduate, masters, and PhD students studying e.g. gender neutral parenting, period product provision in Scotland, intergenerational and transnational caring.

I'm available to supervise undergraduate and postgraduate research projects on topics related to my interests, and especially those which use sociological theory and qualitative, ethnographic, participatory methods to investigate educational inequalities, particularly at the intersections of gender and sexuality.

Philip Abram's Memorial Prize 2016 British Sociological Association. The British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Memorial Prize is for the best first and sole-authored book within the discipline of Sociology.

It was established in honour of the memory of Professor Philip Abrams whose work contributed substantially to sociology and social policy research in Britain. He is remembered for the encouragement and assistance he provided to many young sociologists at the start of their careers.