Umut Erel's OpenLearn Profile

Lecturer in Sociology, The Open University Research interests My research interests are in migration, ethnicity, gender and class, culture and representation empirically and theoretically. I have explored issues of intersectionality, the social construction of skill and notions of belonging in recent research projects (e.g. on Refugee Women in London’s voluntary sector and on migration and cohesion in the context of the East of England). I am interested in how these issues play out in practices of citizenship, differentiated along gender and ethnic lines. My monograph on ‘Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship (Ashgate 2009) addresses this through the lens of the life-stories of migrant women from Turkey in Britain and Germany. I am currently exploring migrant women’s mothering practices as citizenship practices in their own right and with respect to shaping their children’s ethnic, cultural, political identities and modes of citizenship, based on two pieces of empirical research on European mothers in London (2011) and Polish, Turkish and Kurdish mothers and children in London (2008). Teaching interests I chair the postgraduate module onEthnography(D844) and am a module team member onSociology and Society(DD201), I have contributed to DD206. Currently I am postgraduate coordinator in the Sociology Department.