Dr Nancy Evans | University of Chester

Programme Leader, BSc Sociology

Dr Nancy Evans (BA, MA, PhD, AFHEA) is a Lecturer and Programme Leader for Sociology at the University of Chester. Responsibilities within this role include the oversight and coordination of the programme, assessments, marketing activities, ongoing curriculum development, communication with the programme team and other programmes, and supporting and engaging with students to continually improve experiences and outcomes.

Alongside her teaching and research, Nancy is a member of the Department of Social and Political Science's Research Ethics Committee. Additionally, Nancy is currently completing her Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCertHE) and Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Nancy leads and teaches on a range of modules across the undergraduate Sociology programme and supervises dissertations, in addition to being a PhD supervisor for Charlene Crossley, whose research focuses on stigma, marginality and racialisation among young people in Manchester.

Nancy's principal research interests surround social security policy, neoliberalism, austerity, welfare reform and stigma, and their lived impacts and inequalities. These themes have been of longstanding interest, from her Undergraduate and Master's dissertation projects examining lived experiences of unemployment, to her PhD, which empirically explored the dynamics of stigma and resistance in the lives of women currently or intermittently claiming a range of means-tested and non-means-tested benefits.

Nancy is actively engaged in research as part of a small interdepartmental research group, Social Justice Chester. The group use participatory approaches to address social harms and engage with local communities. The team's achievements to date include:

- A public research exhibition exploring the lived experience of poverty in the context of a cost-of-living crisis, co-produced with the West Cheshire Poverty Truth Commission

- A review of participatory approaches and a supermarket voucher pilot scheme at West Cheshire Foodbank

- The development of a framework for co-production that is now being piloted across local community organisations.

Evans, N. (2022) Coping with gendered welfare stigma: exploring everyday accounts of stigma and resistance strategies among mothers who claim social security benefits. Social Policy and Society, 1–11.

Evans, N. (2017, December 5) Reflections on the ‘large’ families, poverty & welfare reform conference.

Evans, N. (2018, August 1) Welfare Imaginaries: Reflections from the first seminar.

PhD Sociology (University of Liverpool) (2022)
Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (2018)
MA Sociology (University of Manchester) (2016)
BA (Hons.) Sociology (University of Leeds) (2012)