Dr Rachel Hurdley

Publication

• Date
• Type
• Promoted

Research

My research focuses on how identity and power are organised within:

• Home, work & family
• Everyday spaces & things
• Belonging, remembering, excluding & forgetting
• Methodology

Recent projects are:

• A British Academy Small Grant  Materialising modernity: Patrick Geddes, Mass Observation and the lost aesthetics of social research. 
• In collaboration with colleagues in the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences, I am researching teamwork in the development of an NHS treatment intervention for patients with comorbid dememtia and cancer.
• Ongoing research into Mantelpiece Display,  including Mass Observation Mantelpiece Reports 2019/20
• Drawing and Literary 'Hunches' as a research methodology

A Leverhulme-funded ethnography Rethinking Openness, Space and Organisation examined how power is organised through university spaces and materials.  The research builds on The Power of Corridors.  

Home, family, memory and identity as mundane practices - particularly focusing on materiality - are ongoing research interests. 

Teaching

I am currently Progress Reviewer for Socsi PhD students, supervisor for Masters in Education and contribute to Undergraduate Dissertation Module marking, 

In the past, I have contributed to a number of undergraduate, postgraduate and professional doctorate courses in SOCSI, CPLAN, RGS and HISAR (now SHARE). These include:

Postgraduate

Qualitative Research Methods, Research Design and Practice, Difference and Equality, Latin Historical Texts, Mediaeval Historical Texts, Beginners' and Intermediate Latin

Undergraduate

Power, Culture, and Identity, Social Research Methods, Reading Latin I and II

Biography

I am currently working on a book, The Hidden History of Your House.

I recently completed a British Academy Small Grant project, Materialising modernity: Patrick Geddes, Mass Observation and the lost aesthetics of social research. In collaboration with colleagues in the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences, I have also researched teamwork in the development of an NHS treatment intervention for patients with comorbid dememtia and cancer.

Following popular Radio 4 documentaries on 'The Hidden History' of differnt domestic forms, I am now working on a series of other programmes with producer Louise Adamson (Juniper Productions).

I collaborated with National Museum Wales/Amgueddfa Cymru in a community engagment project to implement dementia-friendly design. Another collaboration with Archaeology colleagues involved working with Men's Shed, Ely, Cardiff, to develop community learning strategies for Antler Work.

Building on a short study, The Power of Corridors, I undertook an ethnography Rethinking Space, Openness and Organisation as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow 2011-2014, exploring the relation between social, material and spatial interactions and relations on a university campus.  

Making Wales, Remembering Home was a Beacon-funded collaborative film-making project with refugees and destitute asylum seekers.

I was The Sociological Review Fellow 2009-10, writing a monograph, Home, Materiality, Memory and Belonging: keeping culture (2013).

Following my time as a researcher in the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods in Qualiti, I took up an ESRC post-doctoral fellowship in SOCSI.  

With a joint Classics and English degree, I initially taught Classics at an Oxford school, while volunteering at a housing rights centre. Curious to explore the problem and meaning of 'house and home', I did a housing studies MSc.  In 2006, I completed a PhD in housing, Dismantling Mantelpieces: consumption as spectacle and shaper of self in the home at the Cardiff School of Geography and Planning.  

Supervisions

I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of:

• the meaning of home
• sociology and literary analysis
• archival research
• material culture