Dr Laura Fenton

Population Health, School of Medicine and Population Health

Research Associate

ScHARR staff Dr Laura Fenton
Profile picture of ScHARR staff Dr Laura Fenton
l.m.fenton@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 2980

Full contact details

Dr Laura Fenton
Population Health, School of Medicine and Population Health
Regent Court (ScHARR)
30 Regent Street
Sheffield
S1 4DA
Profile

I joined the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group in 2021. I’m currently working as the lead qualitative research associate on Youth Drinking in Decline (Y-DiD), a Wellcome Trust funded mixed methods project which examines changes in youth drinking cultures over recent decades.

Before joining ScHARR I worked at the University of Manchester on the  ESRC funded Girlhood and Later Life project (PI: Professor Penny Tinkler), which explored the youth transitions of women born in the United Kingdom  between 1939-52, and the implications of youth experiences for later life. Both this and my current role build on research experience I gained through my PhD, which I completed in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester in 2018. My Phd thesis examines the changing place of alcohol in the day-to-day lives of three generations of British women. 

Qualifications
  • PhD in Sociology, University of Manchester
  • Masters of Sociology, York University (Canada)
  • Honours Bachelor of Arts, University of Toronto (Canada)
Research interests

In broad terms, my research interests include alcohol, youth, gender, the life course. social change, and creative biographical methods. I am particularly interested in using biographical and related qualitative methods to better understand people’s changing relationships to alcohol across both biographical and historical time.

Publications

Journal articles

Chapters

Professional activities and memberships

I am a member of the British Sociological Association, and a former co-convenor of its Alcohol study Group. I am also a member and former social media officer of the Drinking Studies Network.