Emily Nicholls

Emily joined the University of York in 2021 as a lecturer in Sociology, after working as a lecturer/senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth since 2015. She has previously worked as a Research Associate (RA) on a collaborative ESRC-funded project ‘If the Shoe Fits: Enabling Patient-Centred Podiatry’ around footwear and identity with the University of Sheffield and Podiatry Services, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. Prior to this, Emily worked as a Teaching Assistant whilst undertaking her PhD thesis at Newcastle University. Emily also completed an MA in Gender Research at Newcastle University, and a BA in Politics and Philosophy at the University of Leeds.

Her main research interests are in the area of gender, femininities and identities, specifically the ways in which gender and identity are performed in everyday contemporary contexts such as the Night Time Economy (NTE), and the ways in which gender intersects with class, age and sexuality, particularly in the context of alcohol consumption. Her PhD thesis examined the ways in which young women embody ‘appropriate’ femininities through their everyday practices on a ‘girls’ night out’ and in the NTE more widely. She is particularly interested in the ways in which drinking practices - and more recently, sobriety - are negotiated in the construction of feminine identities, and is a member of the British Sociological Association (BSA) Alcohol Study Group. She has also researched drinking practices during lockdown and the expanding 'No and Low Alcohol' market.

Emily has recently published a full-length monograph on negotiations of femininity on a 'girls' night out' with Palgrave Macmillan (https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319933078). She has also published journal articles around risk and femininity, and a book chapter on femininities, class and alcohol consumption published by Routledge as part of the BSA’s Sociological Futures Series. She was shortlisted for the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association Student Essay Prize in 2015. Her collaborative work on shoes and identity at the University of Sheffield received a Council for Allied Health Professions Research (CAHPR) Public Health Research Award and was shortlisted for a Medipex Innovation Award.