Biography

Research Interests

My research is situated within the broad sociological field of race and ethnicity studies. Drawing upon two and half years of ethnographic and residential fieldwork in the city of Leicester and the county of Leicestershire, I have examined the formation of white ethnic identities with particular reference to the ways in which Englishness/Britishness is portrayed as essentially white, suburban/rural and middle-class. I have also explored everyday and ethnographic understandings of genealogy, ethnicity and identity with particular attention given to the ways in which the members of interracial (or in English vernacular ‘mixed-race’) families think about ideas of belonging, descent, inheritance and ancestry across racial, ethnic, religious and classed lines. I have also conducted research on collective action, ethnicity and the state within multicultural urban settings. This aspect of my research has illuminated some of the complexities, contradictions and limits of the contemporary advanced liberal state and formed one impetus for an ESRC-funded project entitled ‘Communities within Communities: a longitudinal approach to minority majority relations and social cohesion’. Drawing on fieldwork with families and across generations, this project aims to elucidate complex contours of difference and belonging that are played out over time and across space with established white British Italian and British Asian Pakistani minorities and the white British majority in a suburban town in the South East of England. 

I have recently completely the manuscript of my book entitled Whiteness, Class and the Legacies of Empire: On Home Ground (Palgrave Macmillan 2012). The book examines the ethnographic articulation of ideas of whiteness, coloniality and social class across rural and urban locales in Britain.

Publications

Book
Tyler, K. (2012, in press) Whiteness, Class and the Legacies of Empire: On Home Ground, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Edited Book

Petersson, B. and Tyler, K.(eds.) (2008) Majority Cultures and the Everyday Politics of Ethnic difference: Whose house is This? Palgrave Macmillan, 264 pages. (This book was co-edited with Petersson)

Articles in Refereed Journals

Tyler, K. (2012, forthcoming) ‘Decolonising Leicester/shire: social class, whiteness and coloniality’, Special Issue of Ethnicities entitled ‘National Identity, Class and Resentment’.

Tyler, K. (2011) ‘New ethnicities and old classities: respectability and diaspora’, Social Identities, July, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 523-542.

Tyler, K. (2009) ‘Whiteness studies and laypeople’s engagements with race and genetics’, New Genetics and Society, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 35-48.

Tyler, K. (2008) ‘Ethnographic approaches to race, genetics and genealogy’, Sociology Compass, vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 1860-1877.

Tyler, K. (2007) ‘Streetville Forever’: collective action, ethnicity and the state’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, vol. 14. no. 5, pp. 579-602.

Tyler, K. (2005) ‘The genealogical imagination: the inheritance of interracial identities’, The Sociological Review, vol. 53, no. 3, August, pp.475-494.

Tyler, K. (2004) ‘Racism, tradition and reflexivity in a former mining town’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 290-309.

Tyler, K. (2003) ‘The racialised and classed constitution of English village life’, Ethnos, vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 391-412.

Book Chapters

Tyler, K. (PB 2009) ‘Race, genetics and inheritance: reflections upon the birth of “black” twins to a “white” IVF mother’. In Race, Ethnicity and Nation: Perspectives from Kinship and Genetics, pp. 33-51. Edited by Peter Wade, Berghahn Books.

Tyler, K. (2008) ‘Debating the rural and the urban: majority white racialised discourses on the countryside and the city’. In Petersson and Tyler (eds) [see edited book for full reference], pp.75-93.

Tyler, K. (2008) ‘Majority cultures and the everyday politics of ethnic difference’ (introductory chapter). In Petersson and Tyler (eds) pp.1-14.

Petersson, B. and Tyler, K. (2008) ‘The making and breaking of difference: concluding thoughts’. In Petersson and Tyler (eds). pp. 226-237. (This chapter was co-written with Petersson)

Tyler, K. (2006) ‘Village people: race, nation, class and the community spirit’. In The New Countryside? Ethnicity, Nation and Exclusion in Contemporary Rural Britain. pp. 129-148. Edited by Sarah Neal and Julian Agyeman, Policy Press (Paperback).

Review Articles

Tyler, K. (2009) Review of The Everyday Language of White Racism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol 15, no. 4, pp. 860-861.

Tyler, K. (2008) Review of A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, pp. 204-206.

Tyler , K. (2005) ‘Local democracy and the race-relations amendment act’, Left Curve, no. 29, pp.112-113.

Tyler , K. (2002) Review of A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience. The Sociological Review, vol. 50, no 2, pp. 303-306.

Translated Publications

Tyler, K. (2010) Baltuju etniskumo dekolonizavimas: domejimasis genetikos mokslu. [Decolonising White Ethnicity: Postcolonial Engagements with Genetic Science], In Socialine Antropologija Ethnografija Ir Biotechnologija. Edited by Aukusole Cepaitiene. Vilnius: University of Vilnius Press, pp. 105-117.

Tyler, K. (2005) ‘Comprehénsion publique des notions de race et de génétique: au apercu des résultats d’une récente recherché au Royaume-Uni’ [see also English translation: ‘A summary of findings of a project that examined public understandings of race and genetics in the UK’], Bulletin of L’Observatoire de la Génétique, Centre de bioethique, Montreal. http://www.ircm.qc.ca/bioethique/obsgenetique

Published Reports

Tyler, K. and O. Jensen (2009) Communities within Communities: a longitudinal approach to minority/ majority relationships and social cohesion. ESRC.

Jensen O. and Tyler K. (2009) Communities within Communities: Reflections on belonging, ethnicity and neighbourhood relations in Maybury-Sheerwater, Woking, a twenty-page booklet summarising the key project findings for ‘user’ dissemination. (This booklet was co-written with Jensen).

Recent Invited International and National Conference Papers

March 2011, invited speaker, funded by host, seminar paper, Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism, University of Surrey.

December 2010, invited speaker, funded by host, Departmental Seminar, Department of Sociology, University of Newcastle.  

June 2010 (while on maternity leave), invited speaker, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Symposium on ‘National Identity, Class and Resentment’, Department of Sociology, University of Bristol.

May 2010 (while on maternity leave), invited speaker, Workshop on the relationship between anthropological and sociological approaches to social class in Britain, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, University of Manchester.

May 2009: invited Speaker, funded by hosts, Symposium on English racisms, Department of Sociology, University of Leeds.

Feb 2009: Plenary Speaker, invited, funded by host, Anthropology
Conference on ‘Consent and Domination’, University of Lampeter.

Dec 2008: invited Speaker, funded by ESRC, Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) Annual conference, University of Auckland, New Zealand, Discussant Dame Professor Marilyn Strathern, Cambridge, Mistress of Girton College.

Nov 2007: invited speaker, funded by host, University of Roehampton, Health Sciences Research Day.

Sept 2007: invited speaker, funded by host, International Conference on ‘Anthropology, Ethnography and Biotechnology’, University of Vilnius, Lithuania.

March 2006: invited speaker, funded by host, The Policy Studies Institute, London.

Oct 2006: invited speaker, funded by host, The Department of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden.

March 2007: invited speaker, funded by host, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences, University of Glasgow.

Nov 2005: invited speaker, funded by host, Anthropology Department, Goldsmiths College.

Dec 2005: invited speaker, funded by host, Anthropology Department, University of Aberdeen

Dec 2005: invited speaker, funded by host, Department of Sociology and Politics, University of East Anglia

Dec 2004: invited speaker, funded by EU, European Conference on ‘Public Understandings of Genetics’, University of Barcelona, Spain.

Aug 2004: invited speaker, part funded by the Department of Sociology and the University of Surrey Support Fund. The 9th International Society for the Study of European Ideas Conference, University of Navarra, Spain.
In this period, I have also presented 5 further conference papers and acted as a panel discussant to the annual conference of the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism, Universities of Surrey and Roehampton, as well as a paper to the Anthropology of Britain workshop, University of Aberdeen

Teaching

Undergraduate teaching (2004 -2009)

Level 1 Contemporary Societies

Level 1 Current Social Issues

Level 1 Crime and Society

Level 2 Group Research Project

Level 3 Race and Ethnicity

Level 3 Aspects of Social Research Methods

Level 3 Sociological Analysis

Current Doctoral Supervision

Lexi Scherer (1+3 ESRC studentship) Children, reading and ethnic identities
Ewa Lesiak (self-funded, Principal Supervisor) Polish migrants to the UK
Helen Moore ( 1+3 ESRC studentship, Principal Supervisor) Rurality, white ethnicity and Englishness  
Charlie Leddy-Owen ( +3 ESRC studentship, Principal Supervisor) White ethnicity, nation, nationalism  and multiculturalism
Maduka Ogbuonye (Self-funded, Principal Supervisor) Police intelligence gathering and ethnic minority groups: a study of the impact of dual perceptions on the quality of police information

Recently awarded PhD students
Sylvie Patel (PhD Awarded June 2010; self-funded) A Comparative study of Islam and ethnicity amongst school children in Britain and France
M. Abdou (PhD awarded Sept 2009; funded by Ministry of Education, Egypt, full-time) Ethnicity, religion and workplace segregation in Egypt
Sam Murphy (PhD awarded Dec 2008, ESRC funded, full-time) A qualitative study of gendered experiences of stillbirth
Harshad Keval (PhD awarded Jan 2008 self funded, part-time) Cultural negotiations in health and illness
Wong (PhD awarded 2007 self funded, full-time) An ethnography of British Chinese children

Affiliations

Editorial Board membership

2009-: Editoral Board member of Ethnic and Racial Studies (ranked 2nd top journal in the field of race and ethnicity studies)

2006-: Editorial Board member of Sociology Compass, race and ethnicity section, prestigious international Wiley-Blackwell journal that incorporates all major Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines and subfields.

Professional Activities

2005-: Co-founder and convenor of the ASA (Association of Social Anthropologists) Anthropology of Britain Network http://www.theasa.org/networks/aob.shtml

The network’s aim is to provide a forum which will facilitate a greater level of communication between researchers with an ethnographic interest in contemporary British society. The network has built up an international membership of over 100 scholars, including postgraduate students and eminent professors. To date we have organised 5 one-day workshops at the universities of Surrey, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Sheffield Hallam, Sheffield, an international conference panel at the ASA annual conference at Keele University, and three seminars at the universities of Bristol, London Met., and Aberdeen.

Administrative Duties

Selected Administrative Duties

2007-2009: Programme Director of MSc in Social Research Methods

2006-2008: Programme Director of MSc in Social Research

2004-2009: Postgraduate Admissions Tutor for MScs in Social Research and Social Research Methods

2006-2009:  Plagiarism Convenor (All undergraduate and postgraduate levels)

2004-2005: Organisation of Departmental seminar series

2008-2009: Development of PDP for all MSc Students in the Department (full and part-time)

Dec 2008: 5-yearly Periodic Review and Validation of MScs in Social Research Methods and Social Research.

Nov 2008: Organisation and management of 3-day residential conference in Bournemouth for all FT and PT MSc Students in the Department entitled ‘The poetics and politics of researching ethnicity, difference and justice’

Grants held