Gemma is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology, and has worked at the University of Manchester since 2007. Her expertise is in social movements and protest, qualitative/mixed social network analysis, and critical social theory. Gemma has researched a variety of historical and contemporary social movements, including climate activists, public sector trade unions, and the Suffragette Movement. She is interested in how interpersonal social networks shape participation in activism, particularly high risk forms of activism on the part of women. She is also interested in protest that takes place outside of movement organisations, by indivduals in the course of their everyday lives.

Gemma has pioneered mixed method approaches to social network analysis (MMSNA) for the study of social movements, alternative lifestyles, and historical networks and has provided several training workshops on MMSNA. She co-founded the research group movements@manchester and is a member of the Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis. Key publications include Social Movements and Protest (Cambridge, 2014), Social Network Analysis for Ego-Nets (Sage, 2015), and Shared Housing, Shared Lives (Routledge, 2018). She is currently Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project Religion, Theology and Climate Change, which explores theological creativity around climate change and climate activism. 

Teaching

Gemma teaches in the areas of social theory and social movements. She currently teaches SOCY30461 Power & Protest and convenes the Sociology Dissertation Module. She has spent many years as Undergraduate Programmes Director and Director of Teaching and Learning in Sociology. In 2015 she won a University Teaching Excellence Award. 

Postgraduate Opportunities

Gemma is available to supervise PhD projects on subjects relating to political sociology, social movements and protest, historical social movements, women's movements, qualitative/mixed social network analysis, and politics and everyday life.