 Professor Sarah Holloway
B.A., Ph.D (Sheffield)
Professor of Human Geography
email: S.L.Holloway@lboro.ac.uk
Tel : +44 (0)1509 223095
Fax: +44 (0)1509 223930
Room NN.1.15, Martin Hall building, East Park
Research Interests
My research interests focus on the twin themes of ‘Children, Youth and Families’ and ‘Social Geographies of In/Exclusion. As a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, I am currently pursuing these interests though two research projects which focus on ‘Geographies of Education’. I supervise a number of PhD students and welcome further applications centred on any of my core research themes.
In the following paragraphs, I provide a little more detail on my current and past research projects and list some key publications.
Current Research Projects
Education, care or educare? Childcare, child enrichment activities and parenting support in British primary schools:
This research project (conducted jointly with Dr Helena Pimlott-Wilson) examines contemporary educational restructuring in a neo-liberal state, focusing in particular on the roles schools play in society. Our interest is in the implementation of the Extended Services initiative in Britain through which the Government is seeking to broaden schools role to incorporate greater responsibility for signposting or providing childcare, wider enrichment activities for children, and parenting support.
Funding from The Leverhulme Trust, through my Philip Leverhulme Prize, allowed us to undertake research with LA representatives, head teachers, extended services practitioners and children. The research reveals the diverse challenges facing schools in implementing the initiative; its varied interpretation in schools serving different socio-economic communities; and consequently its differential impacts on the school and family lives of children across the class spectrum.
An ESRC award, entitled ‘Parental attitudes to the changing role of primary schools in British society’, is taking this research agenda forward. Key themes for consideration are parents opinions on primary schools as places of childcare; their attitudes to child enrichment activities (e.g. extra-curricular clubs) outside of school time; and their views on schools’ role in providing parenting support.
Holloway, S.L., Hubbard, P.J., Jöns, H. & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2010) 'Geographies of education and the importance of children, youth and families' Progress in Human Geography 34.5: 583-600
Holloway, S.L. and Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2011) The politics of aspiration: neo-liberal education policy, 'low' parental aspirations, and primary school Extended Services in disadvantaged communities Children's Geographies 9.1: 79-94
Holloway, S.L. & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (2012, forthcoming) ‘Neoliberalism, policy localisation and idealised subjects: a case study on educational restructuring in England' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
Kazakh Youth Transitions and Educational Strategies: This project (conducted jointly with Prof. Sarah O'Hara and Dr Helena Pimlott-Wilson) explores the educational strategies of young Kazakhs, examining how they seek to develop educational capital which will be marketable in a post-Transition economy, and the ways they link these strategies to their future imagined adulthoods at work and at home. The project involves research with young Kazakhs completing University degrees in Kazakhstan as well as those who have travelled to Britain to study. The research, was funded through my Leverhulme Prize and by Nottingham University. It pays particular attention to the intersections of gender and ethnicity, and is drawing on a purposeful sample which includes young men and women of Russian and Kazakh ethnicity.
Key publications:
Holloway, S.L., O'Hara, S.L. & Pimlott-Wilson, H. (forthcoming) Educational mobility and the gendered geography of cultural capital: the case of international student flows between Central Asia and the UK Environment and
Planning A
Previous Research Projects
Mothering cultures and childcare services: This project considered mothering cultures and parents use of childcare services in Britain. Focusing particularly on a middle-class and working-class neighbourhood in a British city, it explored how ideas about good mothering are reproduced through locally embedded social practices and the influence these have on the social organisation of pre-school childcare provision. Particular attention was paid to questions of social justice, as well as the constitution and negotiation of need for day-care, pre-school education and baby-sitting services. The research was published as a set of single-authored journal papers, and in a jointly-authored book 'Geographies of New Femininities' which links current debates about globalisation with the literature on identity politics.
Key publications:
Holloway, S.L. (1998) 'Geographies of justice: preschool-childcare provision and the conceptualisation of social justice' Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 15, 85-104
Holloway, S.L. (1998) 'Local childcare cultures: moral geographies of mothering and the social organisation of pre-school education' Gender, Place and Culture, 5, 29-53
Holloway, S.L. (1998) '"She lets me go out once a week": mothers' strategies for obtaining 'personal' time and space' Area, 30, 321-330
Holloway, S.L. (1999) 'Mother and worker?: the negotiation of motherhood and paid employment in two urban neighbourhoods' Urban Geography 20, 438-460
Laurie, N., Dwyer, C., Holloway, S.L. & Smith, F.M. (1999) Geographies of New Femininities (Longman: Harlow, Essex)
Cyberkids: children's social networks, 'virtual communities' and on-line spaces: This research project focused on children's access to and use of new information and communications technologies and looked in particular at the ways in which children's technological competencies on the Internet are shaping their use of time, domestic relationships, friendship networks and sense of community from the local to the global scale. The research was graded 'outstanding' by the ESRC and the results disseminated to an academic audience through a series of publications in geographical and other social science journals, and to a wider public through coverage in the national and local broadcast and print media. The policy implications of the work have been shared with numerous user groups including BBC Education, the NUT, the DfES and BECTA, and directly shaped NAACE advice to schools.
Key publications:
Valentine, G. and Holloway, S.L. (1999)'"The vision thing": schools and information and communication technology' Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 5, 63-79
Bingham, N., Holloway, S.L. & Valentine, G. (1999) 'Where do you want to go tomorrow? Connecting children and the Internet' Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 17, 655-672
Holloway, S.L., Valentine, G. & Bingham, N. (2000) 'Institutionalising technologies: masculinities, femininities and the heterosexual economy of the IT classroom' Environment and Planning A 32, 617-633
Holloway, S.L. and Valentine, G. (2000) 'Corked hats and Coronation Street: British and New Zealand children's imaginative geographies of the other' Childhood: A Global Journal of Child Research 7, 335-357
Holloway, S.L. & Valentine, G. (Eds) (2000) Children's Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning (Routledge: London)
Holloway, S.L. and Valentine, G. (2000) 'Spatiality and the new social studies of childhood' Sociology 34, 763-783
Valentine, G. and Holloway, S.L. (2001) 'On-line dangers?: geographies of parents’ fears for children’s safety in cyberspace' Professional Geographer, 53, 71-83
Holloway, S.L. & Valentine G. (2001) '"It's only as stupid as you are": children's and adults' negotiation of ICT competence at home and at school' Social and Cultural Geography , 2, 25-42
Valentine, G. and Holloway, S.L. (2001) ' A window on the wider world? Rural children’s use of information and communication technologies ' Journal of Rural Studies, 17, 383-394
Holloway, S.L. and Valentine, G. (2001) ‘Placing cyberspace: processes of Americanization in British children’s use of the Internet' Area, 33, 153-160
Holloway, S.L. and Valentine, G. (2001) ‘Children at home in the wired world: reshaping and rethinking the home in urban geography' Urban Geography, 22, 562-583
Valentine, G., Holloway, S.L. and Bingham, N. (2002) 'The digital generation?: children, ICT and the everyday nature of social exclusion' Antipode, 34, 296-315
Valentine, G. and Holloway, S.L. (2002) 'Cyberkids? Exploring children's identities and social networks in on-line and off-line worlds' Annals, Association of American Geographers, 92, 302-319
Holloway, S.L. and Valentine, G. (2003) Cyberkids: Children in the Information Age (RoutledgeFalmer: London)
Racialising Gypsy-Travellers: Nature, Bodies, Rurality and Politics: This research project considered questions of social in/exclusion through a focus on the racialisation of Gyspy-Traveller attending Appleby New Fair, an event which is now one of the largest Gypsy-Traveller gatherings in Europe. Drawing on social constructionist and psychoanalytic accounts of difference, this project used archival data and semi-structured interviews to explore the place-specific nature of racialisation, and the ways in which processes of racialisation can produce highly spatialised understandings of difference in both an historical and a contemporary context. In so doing, the research contributes both to our understanding of white people’s power to racialise ethnic minority groups, and highlights the chaotic nature of whiteness as a social construction. Indeed, the fluidity of these representations of a rural other over time points to their contested place in the rural idyll, and highlights the possibilities of radical openness in rural society which contrasts with more common reactionary attempts to bound rural space.
Key publications:
Holloway, S.L. (2003) 'Outsiders in rural society?: Constructions of rurality and nature-society relations in the racialisation of English Gypsy-Travellers, 1869-1934' Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21, 695-715
Holloway, S.L. (2004) ‘Rural roots, rural routes: discourses of rural self and travelling other in debates about the future of Appleby New Fair, 1945-1969’ Journal of Rural Studies, 20, 143-156
Holloway, S.L. (2005) ‘Articulating Otherness? White rural residents talk about Gypsy-Travellers’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, 351-367
Holloway, S.L. (2007) ‘Burning issues: whiteness, rurality and the politics of difference’ Geoforum, 38, 7-20
Drinking Places: Social Geographies of Consumption: This research project, which explores the impact of socio-economic process in shaping place-specific cultures of alcohol consumption in two contrasting geographical communities, has recently been funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It focuses on Stoke-on-Trent, one of the most deprived areas in the country with higher than national average levels of alcohol consumption which also has a growing ethnic minority population with religious prohibitions against drink; and Eden, Cumbria, the most sparsely populated district in the country where the centrality of the pub in village life has historically been linked with the development of a strong temperance movement. In this context, the project will explore inter-generational shifts in attitudes to, and use of, alcohol; recent increases in drinking amongst women and young people; and the wider benefits and problems associated with alcohol use in these communities.
Jayne, M., Holloway, S.L. & Valentine, G. (2006) ‘Drunk and disorderly: alcohol, urban life and public space’ Progress in Human Geography, 30, 451-468.
Jayne, M., Valentine, G. & Holloway, S.L. (2008) Fluid boundaries -- British binge drinking and European civility: alcohol and the production and consumption of public space Space & Polity 12: 81-100.
Jayne, M., Valentine, G. & Holloway, S.L. (2008) The place of drink: geographical contributions to alcohol studies Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy 15: 219-232.
Holloway, S.L., Jayne, M., & Valentine, G. (2008) ‘Sainsbury’s is my local’: English alcohol policy, domestic drinking practices and the meaning of home Transaction of the Institute of British Geographers 33:532-547.
Valentine, G. Holloway, S.L., Knell, C. & Jayne, M. (2008) ‘Drinking places: young people and cultures of alcohol consumption in rural environments’ Journal of Rural Studies 24, 28-40.
Jayne, M., Valentine, G., Holloway, S.L. & Knell, C. (2008) ‘Geographies of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness: a review of progress’ Progress in Human Geography 32: 247-263.
Holloway, S.L., Valentine, G. & Jayne, M. (2009) Masculinities, femininities and the geographies of public and private drinking landscapes Geoforum 40: 821-831.
Valentine, G. Holloway, S.L. & Jayne (2010) Contemporary cultures of abstinence and the nighttime economy: Muslim attitudes towards alcohol and the implications for social cohesion Environment and Planning 42: 8-22.
Valentine, G., Holloway, S.L. & Jayne, M. (2010) 'Generational patterns of alcohol consumption: continuity and change' Health & Place 16.5: 916-925
Jayne, M., Valentine, G. & Holloway, S.L. (2010) 'Emotional, embodied and affective geographies of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness' Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35.4: 540-554
Undergraduate Teaching
My teaching interests focus on questions to do with social diversity and the cultural politics of difference. Information on the following modules is available to Loughborough students through the Learn Server:
Post-Graduate Research
I welcome applications from students interested in social and cultural or feminist geographies.
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