Natasha Mauthner

Natasha Mauthner is a Professor of Social Science Philosophy and Method and joined the Newcastle University Business School as Director of Research in September 2018. Prior to this appointment, she worked at the University of Aberdeen’s Business School (2003-2018) where she was Director of Research (2012-2018), led the REF2014 Business and Management submission, and was the Research Lead on the Business School’s Athena SWAN Bronze Award (2016-17). From 2013 to 2018 Natasha was an Associate Director of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, a consortium centre based at the University of Edinburgh. Natasha has also held research posts at the University of Aberdeen’s Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research (1998-2003) and Health Services Research Unit (1995-1996), and the University of Edinburgh’s Research Unit in Health and Behavioural Change (1996-1998). Natasha has an Honorary Chair at the University of Aberdeen's Business School, and has had visiting appointments at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Carlton University in Canada, University of Melbourne in Australia, and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

Natasha holds an undergraduate degree in the natural sciences from the University of Cambridge (awarded 1989), in which she studied biology, history and philosophy of science, and experimental psychology. She moved into the Social and Political Sciences Faculty at the University of Cambridge for her PhD (awarded 1994), funded by a Medical Research Council studentship. Her doctoral thesis explored women's experiences of motherhood and was published as The Darkest Days of my Life: Stories of Postpartum Depression (Harvard University Press, 2002). In 1994 she took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education to work with Professor Carol Gilligan funded by scholarships from the Fulbright Commission, the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation, and the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.

In 2017 Natasha was elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in recognition of her international expertise and contribution to the development of a critical social science and methodological innovation in qualitative research.

Natasha has published over 60 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and a book by Harvard University Press. She has contributed to leading journals such as Sociology; Gender, Work and Organisation; and Work, Employment and Society, and to benchmark edited collections (most recently a piece on research ethics for the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research Ethics, 2018) and encyclopaedia entries (most recently on ‘Data Sharing Methods’ in the Wiley-Blackwell's Encyclopedia of Sociology, 2017).

Natasha is an Editorial Board Member of Qualitative Research and sits on the Chartered Association of Business Schools Research Committee. She has acted as an External Reviewer of Research Excellence Framework preparations for several universities.

Funding sources for Natasha's research have included the Economic and Social Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the European Union, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Society for Research Into Higher Education, the Carnegie Trust, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Scottish Universities Insight Institute.

Natasha has been engaged in a programme of knowledge exchange activities through contributions to the media, public events, blogs, practitioner conferences, collaborative projects with artists, and the development of academic-policy-practitioner networks.

Natasha has undertaken extensive undergraduate and postgraduate teaching over the past 30 years, and she has a passion for teaching courses on research philosophies and methods; and gender, work and organisation.