Biography
Charlotte Faircloth is a Lecturer in the Sociology of Gender in the Department of Social Science, at UCL IOE. She completed her PhD at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, looking at women's experiences of attachment parenting and 'full-term' breastfeeding in London and Paris. She was Mildred Blaxter post-doctoral research fellow with the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness, based in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent. During this time she completed her book Militant Lactivism? Intensive Motherhood and Attachment Parenting in the UK and France, published by Berghahn Books and shortlisted for British Sociological Association's Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. She was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship whilst at Kent, for a 3-year project entitled 'Parenting: Gender, Intimacy and Equality' looking at how couples divide childcare. Whilst carrying out this research, Charlotte was appointed to a Senior Lectureship in Social Sciences at the University of Roehampton, London. She has undertaken a PGCHE and is a member of the HEA.
Charlotte's work is part of an area of academic scholarship, which situates 'parenting' as a key topic for understanding modern society, both in the UK and internationally. Drawing attention to broader socio-cultural processes that have cast modern child rearing as a highly important yet problematic sphere of social life, her research engages with social anthropology (in debates around gender, kinship and care) sociology (constructionist theories of social problems, risk consciousness and individualisation) and social policy (with a medical anthropological perspective on public health, and the expertise culture around family life).
Charlotte teaches on courses relating to gender and research methodology at UCL, as well as on the subjects of family, kinship and reproduction at the Universities of Kent and Cambridge as a visiting lecturer.
