Prof Stephanie Taylor

Research interests

I am an Emeritus Professor in the School of Psychology & Counselling.

My most recent research concerns creative work and workers in the cultural and creative industries. I have also written on identities of relationship to place, including national identities. My research explores identification and a complex gendered subject using a narrative-discursive approach based in narrative and critical discursive psychology.

My 2018 Palgrave collection The New Normal of Working Lives: Critical Studies in Contemporary Work and Employment (co-edited with Susan Luckman) presented research on the changing meanings and values attached to work and a contemporary worker subject. You can watch a video about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFYf3Lfr0dg 

Two earlier collections were the 2015 special issue and Sociological Review Monographs collection Gender and Creative Labour, co-edited with Bridget Conor and Rosalind Gill, and Theorizing Cultural Work: Labour, Continuity and Change in the Creative Industries, with Mark Banks and Rosalind Gill (Routledge, 2013).  I was interviewed about my research on creative work for an Editorial Conversation in the Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy (2022).

My 2012 co-authored monograph Contemporary Identities of Creativity and Creative Work (with Karen Littleton) was developed from three research projects on which I was PI, including a project for the National Arts Learning Network. The book explores the attractions and conflicts of creative work as a personalized, affect-laden project of self-making, perpetually open and oriented to possibility, uncertain in its trajectory or rewards.

A previous area of research is exemplified in Narratives of Identity and Place (Routledge, 2010). This book explores the importance of place-related identities in affluent contemporary societies, like the UK, in which it is usual for people to change residence and break the connections of birth, family and childhood which conventionally provided a link between place and identity.

I have published extensively on research methods and my work is widely cited, including a now classic chapter on qualitative research and discourse analysis: 'Locating and Conducting Discourse Analytic Research' (2001). I set out my methodological approach in detail in my 2015 article in Qualitative Research in Psychology.

Other research publications with a methodological focus include my flagship chapter on 'Discourse Research' for SAGE Research methods Foundations (SRMF) https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/sage-research-methods-foundations and the Sage Encyclopaedia of Research Methods; my 2017 chapter 'Psychosocial research' in The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Social Psychology and my textbook What is Discourse Analysis? (Bloomsbury, 2013). 

I am co-editor for the Palgrave Series Creative Working Lives and have co-edited a number of international collections that present new research on the experience of workers in the cultural and creative industries. My 2020 collection Pathways into Creative Working Lives, (co-edited with Susan Luckman), focuses on entry into creative work in a range of occupations and national contexts. It was developed from the Jean Monnet-funded project 'Creative Industries and the Digital Economy as Drivers of EU Integration and Economy as Drivers of EU Integration and Innovation' on which I was co-I.

Selected recent presentations

June 2022 Keynote Creative affect: Experiences of feeling and emotion in the creative process at conference Multimodus’22 – 1st International Conference on Sound and Image in Art & Design, in Portalegre, Portugal.

June 2022 Inaugural lecture Capturing feeling and experience in research about creativity

September 2019 Paper ‘Creativity: a failing promise?’ as part of the panel Re-Futuring Creative Work, 3^rd CAMEo Conference, Re-Futuring Creative Economies, Leicester.

Selected research publications  

S. Taylor and S. Luckman (2024). Mentoring as affective practice. International Journal of Cultural Policy  https://oro.open.ac.uk/96798/1/Mentoring%20as%20affective%20practice.pdf

S. Luckman and S. Taylor (2024). 'There's a lot of luck involved': Sustaining hope labour amid workplace inequality and precarity as a creative worker. Cuadernos de Relaciones Laboral 42(1), 59-72 https://oro.open.ac.uk/96808/1/Luckman%20and%20Taylor%202024%20Sustaining%20hope%20labour.pdf 

S. Taylor (2023). Creativity: Celebrations and tensions Social and Personality Psychology Compass 17(4) https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12737 Published Open Access.

S. Taylor (2019) “A practitioner concept of contemporary creativity” Social Psychology Quarterly 82:4 (453-472).

S. Taylor and M. Paludan (2019) 'Transcending utility? The gendered conflicts of contemporary creative practice' Feminism & Psychology 30(1): 63-79.

S. Taylor (2019) 'Discourse research' in Paul Atkinson, Sara  Delamont and Richard  Williams (eds) Sage Research Methods Foundations London: Sage. 

S.Taylor (2015) ‘Discursive and psychosocial? Theorising a complex contemporary subject’, Qualitative Research in Psychology 12(1)

S.Taylor (2015) ‘A new mystique? Working for yourself in the neoliberal economy’ The Sociological Review 63: SI (174-187)

Teaching interests

During my 25 years as an academic in the Faculty, I worked on a large number of modules and programmes. Most recently, I was part of the production team for the new Level 1 Psychology & Counselling module D120 Encountering psychology in context for which I authored the chapter ‘Relationships and work’ and co-authored online material for Block 1. From 2018 to 2022 I worked on the postgraduate module Evaluating Psychology: Research and Practice DD803, including as Presentation Chair and MRP Chair. I co-chaired the production team for DD317 Advancing Social Psychology, with Eleni Andreouli. My other work on the current psychology programme includes contributions to Living Psychology (DD210), Investigating Psychology 2 (DE200) and Investigating Psychology 3 (DE300). I also wrote the chapter on Identities for the Level 1 module Understanding Social Lives (DD102).

My other OU teaching includes contributions to psychology, social sciences and research methods module presentation and production including: Qualitative Research (Module B1) on the full-time inter-faculty Research Masters programme; Introducing the Social Sciences (DD101/DD131/DD132); Social psychology (DD307) and the postgraduate modules Ethnography (D844), for which I authored the materials, and Discourse Analysis (D843), for which I co-edited the textbooks.

I also wrote a free short course for psychology students and graduates who may be interested in studying for a PhD in the future and would like more information about the PhD experience in the UK and how to apply. The course can be accessed here Applying to study for a PhD in psychology

Selected teaching publications

S.Taylor (2023) ‘Relationships and work’ Encountering psychology in context textbook.

S. Taylor (2017) 'Changing people, changing times? Questions for social psychology in the 21st century' in E. Andreouli and S.Taylor (eds) Advancing social psychology Milton Keynes The Open University

S. Taylor (2017) ' New workers as contemporary subjects' in E. Andreouli and S.Taylor (eds) Advancing social psychology Milton Keynes The Open University

S. Taylor (2014) 'Identities' in J.Clarke and K.Woodward Understanding Social Lives 2 Milton Keynes The Open University ISBN 978 178 00 7853 3

S.Taylor (2013) What is discourse analysis? London: Bloomsbury Academic  ISBN: 978-1780938493/ 978-1849669030

S.Taylor (2006) ‘Critical Readings in Social Psychology: An introduction’ and ‘Attitudes’ in D.Langdridge and S.Taylor (eds) Critical Readings in Social Psychology Open University Press.

S.Taylor (ed) (2001) Ethnographic Research: A Reader, London, Sage and The Open University.

S. Taylor (2001) 'Locating and Conducting Discourse Analytic Research' and 'Evaluating and Applying Discourse Analytic Research' in M.Wetherell, S.Taylor and S.Yates Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, London, Sage and The Open University.