Dr Helen Bowes-Catton

Professional biography

Having caught the social sciences 'bug' during my A Levels in the early 1990s, I went on to study Sociology and Hispanic Studies at Liverpool University, before moving to Keele to train as a secondary school teacher. For the following seventeen years, I taught the social sciences in schools and colleges while completing my MSc in Social Research Methods and my PhD in Psychology at the Open University.

I joined the OU as an Associate Lecturer in 2010, and later worked as a consultant author in the Psychology Department. In January 2015 I joined the OU full-time as a Lecturer in Social Psychology. I am currently Academic Lead for PGR Training in the Graduate School, where I am responsible for the provision of core skills and methods training for doctoral students across the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. 

Externally, I serve on the committee for the Psychology of Women and Equalities Section of the British Psychological Society, and on the CRAC Vitae Researcher Development Framework Community of Practice Steering Group.

Research interests

My research explores how people experience social and institutional spaces where they are seen as, or feel, 'out of place'. My current work examines the experiences of neurodivergent and disabled doctoral students, and I have recently co-authored a policy report 7 Steps to Equity for Disabled Doctoral Students UK Recommendations from Disabled Students UK and The Open University.

My earlier work examined bisexual people's spatialised experiences of subjectivity. Sited at the intersection of micro-sociology, critical social psychology and cultural geography, my doctoral work used creative methods (such as Lego and Plasticine modelling and photo-diaries) and hermeneutic phenomenological analysis to develop an experiential approach to bisexual subjectivity, and to present a critical analysis of the ways in which it is constituted in different social spaces. I was a co-author of the internationally influential The Bisexuality Report (2012). I continue to contribute to LGBTQIA+ studies, and am currently editing the Routledge International Handbook of Bisexuality.

Supervision

I’m currently supervising work on fat people's experiences of weight stigma in therapy, fathers' perinatal mental health, and gendered discourses in education.

I'm interested in supervising qualitative and mixed methods projects with a social justice focus, in areas including;

• sexualities, subjectivities and space (especially bi+ and trans)

• LGBTQIA+, working class, racialised, neurodiverse and disabled experiences of education (especially HE)

• LGBTQIA+, classed, racialised, neurodiverse and disability inclusion/exclusion in social and institutional spaces (including activist, alternative and political movements)

• critical university studies

Teaching interests

As Academic Lead for PGR Training, I am jointly responsible for the design, delivery, development and evaluation of a wide-ranging programme of research training for PGRs across the university. I also chaired production of four modules of online training materials for PhD students: Getting started on your PhD, Becoming a professional researcher, Designing your research and Approaches to data collection.

In the School of Psychology, I was Module Team Chair on Social Psychology: Critical perspectives on Self and Others (DD307). I was a consultant author on Living Psychology: From the everyday to the extraordinary (DD210), contributed to Advancing Social Psychology (DD317), and have also taught Introducing the Social Sciences (DD102) and its predecessor module (DD131).