Patricia Hamilton

Patricia joined the University of York as a Lecturer in Sociology in September 2022. She completed her undergraduate degree in South Africa, majoring in English and Sociology, before moving to the UK for an MA in Gender Studies, funded by a Commonwealth scholarship. For her PhD at the University of Western Ontario, Patricia interviewed black mothers living in the UK and Canada and explored their engagements with attachment parenting, a popular parenting philosophy that emphasises secure attachment between mother and child and is promoted as a ‘natural’ and ‘instinctive’ approach to raising children. The monograph based on this doctoral research, Black Mothers and Attachment Parenting, was published in the Bristol University Press Sociology of Children and Families series and was shortlisted for the 2021 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize.

She's currently writing a book about the development of parenting leave policies, including maternity leave and Shared Parental Leave, in the UK. Funded by a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship, the research examines parenting leave policies from the perspective of black families.