Bridget is director of the ESRC Centre - CoDE (Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity and Inequality) (www.ethnicity.ac.uk), which produces rigorous and innovative research on racism, anti-racism and racial, ethnic and religious inequalities. CoDE also works to develop the capacity of the UK research community and public and voluntary organisations to research and address racial, ethnic and religious inequalities as well as enhance public understandings.

Bridget has published three books which follow the evolution of her research interests. Her first book White lives: the interplay of 'race', class and gender in everyday life (Routledge) was joint winner of the BSA Philip Abrams Award 2006 and examined the experience of white people in the UK as a racialised experience. In 2014 she published Making Citizens: public rituals and private journeys to citizenship (Palgrave) which explored citizenship ceremonies in 5 countries, examining how they narrated nationhood and citizenship as well as examining new citizen's experiences of moving to the UK. In 2019 she published All in the Mix: Race, Class and School Choice with Carla De Tona (MUP) which considered the ways in which parents' talk around school choice was influenced by geography as well as class and racialised identities. 

She was also the lead editor of Ethnicity, Race and Inequality in the UK: State of the Nation published by Policy Press which is open access and can be downloaded here: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/22310

Bridget has also published multiple peer reviewed articles in the area of race, class, gender, school choice, citizenship and place and been interviewed on national and local radio and written several blogs and opinion pieces. 

Bridget's main research interests are in the area of race, class, gender, citizenship and the cultural industries.

Her book White Lives. The Interplay of 'race', class and gender in everyday life (Routledge 2006) was based on extensive research on the construction of white identity in Britain, looking at the experience of white mothers of young children in two areas of London. This also involved examining the changing constructions of British and English national identities.

Making Citizens: Public Rituals, Celebrations and Contestations of Citizenship, (Palgrave, 2014) was based on research funded by Leverhulme Fellowship and a small grant from the British Academy. It examined the representations of nation and migration in citizenship ceremonies across the UK and in Australia, Canada, the USA, the Netherlands and Ireland. It also explored new UK citizens' experiences of migration and perceptions of whether they were welcomed to the UK.

In an ESRC-funded project Bridget (working with Carla deTona) examined parental approaches to secondary school choice in order to explore the ways in which space and locality impact on identity, in particular through research on the racialised and classed nature of school catchment areas. Alongside various articles, this research is published as: All in the Mix: race, class and school choice (MUP, 2019)

Bridget is director of CoDE (Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity and Inequality). She has also been involved in projects which examine the making of race in the cultural and heritage sector as well as the impact of Covid19 on racial, ethnic and religious inequalities.

Additional information:

Interview on Radio 4 Thinking Allowed: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05nvjhp

Supervision areas:

Phd students (past and present):

• Rachel Finn (graduated 2008) (Gender and South Asian identity in the US).
• Gertrude Wafula (graduated 2009) (Gender and HIV in Kenya).
• Shaida Nabi (graduated 2012) (British Muslim identity and student activism).
• Lorraine Pannett (graduated 2011) (Making livable life in Diaspora: how women refugees make new lives in Manchester).
• Abril Saldana-Tejeda (graduated 2012) (Women and paid domestic workers in Mexico).
• Bethan Harries (graduated 2013) (Young people’s identity and ethnicity).
• Gwyneth Lonergan (graduated 2016) (The Impact of Local Geographies and National Discourses in the Activism of Migrant Women.)
• Alina Rzepnikowska (graduated 2016) (Comparative study of experience of Polish migrants in Barcelona and Manchester)
• Chinelo Njaka (graduated 2017) (Mixed race identification and the census).
• Karis Campion (Mixed race experience across time in Birmingham)
• Kunnaya Wimooktanon (Thai study abroad students and experiences of return, graduate 2018)
• Dieuwertje Dyi Huijg (Agency and intersectionality, graduated 2018)
• Ali Silas (Mormon masculinity in Mexico, graduated 2018)
• Denisse Sepulveda Sanchez (Mapuche experiences of social mobility in Chile, graduated 2018)
• Madiha Khan (Kashmiri students seeking education in Delhi, graduated 2024)
• Mauricio Renteria Gonzales (Class and race in Peru)
• Lauren Bramley (Widening participation in universities)
• Sugandha Agawal (Migrant Activism in Manchester)
• Chengzhi Zhang (Mixed heritage experience in China)