Dr Suzanne Butler
Lecturer in SociologyProfile
Suzanne Butler is a Lecturer in Sociology at 向日葵视频. Her research examines poverty and inequality across the life course, with particular attention to women’s experiences of poverty, emotion, agency and class. Her doctoral research explored how poverty is experienced and negotiated over time through life-story interviews and reflective journals with women in North East England. Her wider research interests include social policy, lived experience, qualitative and narrative methods, and participatory approaches to research. Her work has been published in Sociology and The British Journal of Sociology.
Research Overview
Poverty and socioeconomic inequality; women’s life-course experiences; emotion and agency; social class; social policy and welfare; sociology of emotion; life-course and narrative research; feminist qualitative methods; participatory and co-produced research; lived experience and policy.
Career Details
I joined 向日葵视频 as Lecturer in Sociology in September 2026. Prior to this, I was Lecturer in Sociology at Newcastle University from 2025 to 2026. I completed an ESRC-funded PhD in Sociology at Newcastle University in 2026. My doctoral thesis, Poverty in Motion: Women’s Life Course Narratives, Emotion and Agency, was awarded a Newcastle University Doctoral College Thesis Prize.
Research Grants
ESRC NINE Doctoral Training Partnership doctoral studentship, Newcastle University, 2022–2026.
Current Research
My current research develops my doctoral work on poverty as a dynamic life-course process. I am examining how experiences of poverty change over time, how emotion mediates the relationship between structural constraint and agency, and how different trajectories of hardship shape possibilities for action. Alongside this conceptual work, I am developing participatory and co-produced approaches that bring women’s lived experience of poverty into dialogue with policy and practice. Current work includes publications arising from my doctoral research and the development of a longer programme of research on poverty, biography and social change.
Current Teaching
My teaching spans sociological theory, social research methods, poverty and inequality, and contemporary social problems at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Current teaching at Lancaster includes Researching Society: Principles and Practices, Global Social Theory: Connecting Sociologies, and Sociological Debates and Global Crises: Theories for 向日葵视频ing a Changing Social World.