The Research Team

The study is led by a team of interdisciplinary researchers working across Work and Employment Studies, Youth Studies and the Sociology of Education.

Dr Kim Allen is an Associate Professor in Social Inequalities at the University of Leeds. A sociologist of youth with expertise in young people’s transitions, inequalities of gender and class, and austerity cultures, Kim has worked on a range of research projects in these areas including: ‘Celebrity Culture and Young People’s Classed and Gendered Aspirations’ (ESRC); Young women’s transitions in austerity (British Academy); and ‘Living Gender in Diverse Times’(ESRC).  She is a member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (CIGS) and Centre for Research on Families, Lifecourse and Generation (FLaG) at the University of Leeds.

Professor Rachel Cohen is a Professor of Sociology, Work and Employment at City University. Rachel is a sociologist with expertise in gender, non-standard work, work-life boundaries, body-work, occupational identity and feminist quantitative analysis. She convenes the British Sociological Association’s Work, Employment and Economic Life (WEEL) Study Group and is a member of The Gender and Sexuality Research Centre (GSRC) and Centre for Research on Work and Society (CRoWS).

Dr Kirsty Finn is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Manchester. Kirsty is a sociologist of Higher Education whose interests include educational mobilities, youth transitions, gender and personal life, and graduate transitions.

Professor Kate Hardy is a Professor in Global Labour at the University of Leeds. Kate is a labour geographer and with an international profile in research on self-employment, gender and work, (in)formal labour markets, and sex work. She is PI on the ‘Childcare during Covid‘ project (funded by ESRC), a member of the ESRC Digital Futures at Work research centre, and Associate Editor of New Technology, Work and Employment.

Mia Zhong is a postdoctoral researcher at City, University of London. Mia is a Ph.D. candidate at the sociology and demography joint program at UC Berkeley. She is interested in family, work, gender, and social networks. Mia’s PhD dissertation project studies young full-time mothers who establish their careers as social media influencers, and she has been a research member at the UC Berkeley Social Network Studies.

Dr Lilith Brouwers is a Research Fellow in Gender in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Lilith’s research focuses on labour, gender, disability and marginalised workers. Their prior research has looked at work relations in informal work, hyper-precarity, labour mobility power, labour relations in sex work, and research ethics when researching marginalised groups. Lilith convenes the Sex Work & Labour network and runs peer feedback sessions for the Disability Culture Research network.

Dr Cassie Kill worked on the project until July 2024 as a Research Fellow in Youth, Gender and Work at the University of Leeds. Cassie’s research interests are in the politics of participation, workplace diversity and inclusion initiatives, and young people’s cultural citizenship. Cassie has expertise in a range of qualitative methods including ethnography, participatory research, and creative methods. Cassie is now a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield.