Kayleigh Garthwaite

Kayleigh has a degree in Sociology from Durham University (2007); an MA in Social Research Methods (Social Policy) and a PhD in Human Geography (2012) from Durham University entitled 'Incapacitated? Exploring the health and illness narratives of Incapacity Benefit recipients'.

Kayleigh joined the Department of Geography in October 2012 where she is based in the Wolfson Research Institute. She is currently working on a five year ethnography of health inequalities in contrasting areas of Stockton-on-Tees, UK, led by Professor Clare Bambra and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Kayleigh previously worked at Teesside University as a Research Assistant on a project for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which sought to understand the dynamics of poverty and marginal work across the life-course.

Kayleigh recently won the prestigious British Academy Peter Townsend Policy Press Prize for "Poverty and Insecurity: Life in Low-pay, No-pay Britain”, a book she co-authored which exposes myths about “benefit scroungers".