Dr Charlotte Bates

Charlotte's work explores the entanglements and connections between the body, everyday life and place, with a particular focus on belonging and our relationships with the worlds around us. She has researched and written about swimming and wellbeing, inclusive design and care, and illness and everyday life. Charlotte is interested in developing more 'artful and crafty' approaches to research, and works with live, sensory and mobile methods including video and walking. She is especially interested in interdisciplinary and creative collaborations, and co-founded Writing Lab. Her recent co-edited collections include Living with water. Everyday encounters and liquid connections with Kate Moles (Manchester University Press, 2023) and Walking. A sociological field guide with Emma Jackson (Manchester University Press, 2026). 

Reviews for Walking. A sociological field guide

'Written as a sociological field guide, each contribution takes the reader on a walk, opening up attentiveness to embodied, situated spaces and connections between the local and global, pasts, presents and futures. This wonderful book will be invaluable to those researching, teaching and thinking with space, movement and everyday lives.'
- Rebecca Coleman, University of Bristol

'Engaging and illuminating at once, Walking holds the social, historical, political, and emancipatory possibilities of a stroll close. These are walks beyond the trope of the Romantic figure - in the city, down back alleys, through questions of access and activism. A much-needed contribution to our literatures of place.'
- Jessica J. Lee, author and environmental historian

'A consistently unusual, thoughtful and original set of essays, full of gimlet-eyed observations and rich sociological insights. Taken together, they offer a compellingly diverse yet surprisingly unified account of walking - not walking as mere traversal of space but as a form of knowing, encountering, testing, clarifying, probing and above all listening to the complexity of places. Deeply informed, sociologically grounded, and politically astute, the essays also offer a glimpse of what walking, at its best, might be - a deeply intimate yet non-possessive mode of being in the world.'
- Michael Malay, University of Bristol

'This innovative "field guide" offers a wonderful invitation to pay attention to and analyse our social worlds by engaging the peripatetic senses, the sensory affordances and creative understandings of the messy intersections of bodies, space, place, landscape, rhythms, sound, time and the more than human through a critical sociological lens by walking with contemporary sociologists! A book to read, share and savour! The power of sociological storytelling at its very best!'
- Maggie O'Neill, University College Cork

'This collection of walks tackles big social issues in a lyrical and reflective manner showcasing the creativity of movement as methodology. Read this book and be inspired to get walking and understand spaces and places differently.'
- Ruth Penfold-Mounce, University of York

'Richly textured, insightful and fascinating. Contributors share walks crossing both time and space, illuminating issues that resonate far beyond each writer's path. We travel along supply chains, rivers and disused railway lines, accompanied by dogs, songbirds, comedians and key social theorists. Subjects explored include complex histories and potential futures, regeneration, inequality, technology, racism, environmental injustices and more, alongside networks of care, community solidarity and everyday resistance. Power is revealed, disrupted and questioned with each footstep. Expertly crafted, each essay balances expertise with accessibility and is deeply engaging. Thoughtful prompts encourage the reader to embark on their own mobile research project. An essential guide for curious scholars across many fields-and for anyone who wants to understand the value of walking as, with, and in social research.'
- Morag Rose, University of Liverpool

Reviews for Living with water. Everyday encounters and liquid connections

'This edited collection explores how living, thinking and writing with water can act as a vehicle for exploring emerging and persistent social and ecological issues. Structured around three aquatic themes - float, flow, submerge - the contributions are methodologically and textually diverse, including the creative arts, social sciences, history and ethnography, and encompassing a pleasing diversity of writing styles ranging from the personal and confessional to the figurative, theoretical and critical. As a reading experience, it is delightful.'
- Karen Throsby, University of Leeds

'I love to surf, swim, dive, fish, and sit rugged up in a blanket with hot drink in hand just before plunging into icy winter sea. By diving into this beautifully polymorphous collection of emotional, intoxicating, playful, and daring storytelling you will be carried away by waves of analysis that will in turn alarm you, send shivers of joy across your skin, prompt deep introspection, and leave you with a deeply embodied sense of contentment. The collection is a flowing unity saturated with uncompromising reflexivity, care, and vulnerability that not only enriches thinking, listening, imagining, creating, feeling, and learning with water but perhaps, most importantly of all, a necessary responsibility to this giver of life.'
- Clifton Evers, Newcastle University

'Living with Water: Everyday Encounters and Liquid Connections moves like the element it studies - fluid yet forceful, gentle yet transformative and connecting different streams of thought just as a river connects its tributaries. The collection brings together currents of sociology, anthropology, environmental studies and artistic practice and, like its subject, refuses to be contained within a single form. It flows through academic analysis, artistic intervention and personal narrative to reveal how water simultaneously shapes our physical environment, social relations, cultural practices and ways of thinking.'
- Ningxiang Sun, The Sociological Review