Dr Rachel Crossdale

Rachel joined the Department of Sociological Studies in 2021 as a Research Associate working with Professor Alan Walker and Dr Liam Foster on the EIWO project, a large-scale four country study focussed on exclusion and inequality in late working life.

Prior to joining the Department Rachel worked for the University of Huddersfield as a Research Fellow on the national Athena SWAN review for Advance HE, and on a study into the role of gender in A-Level Chemistry students’ Higher Education decision-making which was funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry Equality and Diversity Fund.

Rachel completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Leeds in 2019. Her thesis ‘Into the Archive: A Realist evaluation of the archive as a site for research’ used records from the Carers UK archive to analyse changes in research into unpaid care from the start of the Carers’ Movement to present day, contextualised with the Carers’ Movement itself and shifting attitudes towards social research. Rachel used a theoretical approach to explore how researchers interact and engage with both archived material and the archive institution to co-produce research findings from archived material.