Professor Katharine Tyler

Katharine Tyler is a Professor of Social Anthropology in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and the Senior Academic Lead for Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology Staff in SPSPA. Her research draws on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork across areas of Britain to contribute to the interdisciplinary field of critical race, ethnicity, and migration studies. In particular, she has mobilised approaches from within critical whiteness studies, postcolonial theory, and feminist sociological approaches to social class to understand the racialised, classed, and postcolonial constitution of Englishness and Britishness.

Professor Tyler has published articles and books on the following themes: the reproduction of the rural as a white middle-class English space; collective action and the state within a multicultural urban neighbourhood; reflexivity, tradition, classed and generational identities and racism in a former mining town; the suburban paradox of conviviality and racism; the genealogical imagination and the formation of mixed-race identities; everyday perspectives on innovations in genetic science with reference to ideas of race, ethnicity and nation; Brexit, race, class and nation; Empire and the culture wars; the pandemic, inequalities and social polarisation, and the anthropology of Britain. Her work is founded upon reflexive, multi-sited, residential ethnographic fieldwork within urban, suburban, and semi-rural locales of Britain.

Professor Tyler has been Principal Investigator of several ESRC-funded projects, including most recently ‘Identity, Belonging and the Role of the Media in Brexit Britain’ (2018-2022) and ‘Identity, Inequality and the Media in Brexit-Covid-19- Britain’ (2020-2022). These projects brought together ethnographers, political scientists, and an artist to explore questions of identity, inequality, and the role of the media in the context of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. Presently, she is a project partner  of the ERC (European Research Council) funded project ‘Twice as Hard, Half as Good? Women Candidates’ Experience of Sexism on the Campaign Trail’, the Principal Investigator of which is Professor Susan Banducci, Politics, Exeter. This project utilizes survey, media and ethnographic data and approaches to explore women candidates’ experiences of sexism and other inequalities, including racism and classism, on the campaign trail.

Publications 

Books

Tyler, K., Banducci, S., and Degnen, C. (eds.) (forthcoming, 2024) Reflections on Polarisation and Inequalities in Brexit Pandemic Times: Fractured Lives in Britain, Routledge (including artwork by Helen Snell) 

Tyler, K. (2012) Whiteness, Class and the Legacies of Empire: On Home Ground, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.  

With B. Petersson (eds.) (2008) Majority Cultures and the Everyday Politics of Ethnic Difference: Whose House is This? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

With C. Degnen (eds.) (2017) Reconfiguring the Anthropology of Britain: Ethnographic, Theoretical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, the Sociological Review Monographs, 65 (1). (published as both a book and a journal issue).

Journal Articles 

Tyler, K., Degnen, C. & Blamire, J. (accepted subject to revisions) Brexit biographies: everyday articulations of race, class and nation through the keyhole issues of empire and ‘culture wars’, the Sociological Review 

Degnen, C., Tyler, K & Blamire, J. (2023) Brexit with a little ‘b’: navigating belonging, ordinary brexits, and emotional relations, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, published first on-line: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.14043 

Tyler, K., Degnen, C. & Blamire, J. (2022) Leavers and Remainers as ‘Kinds of People’: Accusations of Racism Amidst Brexit, Ethnos, p. 1-18 DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2022.2155208

Tyler, K. (2021) Genetic ancestry testing, whiteness and the limits of anti-racism, New Genetics and Society, vol. 40, issue 2, pp. 216-235.

Tyler, K. (2020) ‘Suburban ethnicities: home as the site of interethnic conviviality and racism’, British Journal of Sociology, March 2020, vol. 71, issue 2. pp. 221-235.

Tyler, K (2018) ‘An ethnographic approach to exploring race, nation and the genealogical imagination: An exploration of family history society members deployment of genetic ancestry testing’, Genealogy 2: 1-14, doi:10.3390/genealogy2010001.

With Degnen, C. (2017) ‘Amongst the disciplines: anthropology, sociology, intersection, and intersectionality’, the Sociological Review Monograph 65 (1) March, pp. 35-53.

With Degnen, C. (2017) ‘Bringing Britain into being: sociology, anthropology and British lives’, the Sociological Review Monograph 65 (1) March, pp. 20-34.

Tyler, K (2016) ‘The suburban paradox of conviviality and racism in postcolonial Britain’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43 (11) 1890-1906.

Tyler, K (2015) ‘Attachments and connections: a “white working class” English family’s relationships with their BrAsian “Pakistani” neighbours’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (7) 1169-84. (Taylor and Francis issued a press release of this article. They also featured it in an open access collection of articles on ‘immigration’ to mark the significance of this topic for the 2015 General Election).  

Tyler, K. (2012) ‘The English village, whiteness, coloniality and social class’, Ethnicities 12 (4) 427-44. (Invited to discuss on Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed).

Tyler, K. (2011) ‘New ethnicities and old classities: respectability and diaspora’, Social Identities 17 (4) 523-42.

Tyler, K. (2009) ‘Whiteness studies and laypeople’s engagements with race and genetics’, New Genetics and Society 28 (1) 35-48.

 Tyler, K. (2008) ‘Ethnographic approaches to race, genetics and genealogy’, Sociology Compass 2 (5) 1860-77.

Tyler, K. (2007) ‘Streetville Forever’: collective action, ethnicity and the state’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 14 (5) 579-602.

Tyler, K. (2005) ‘The genealogical imagination: the inheritance of interracial identities’, The Sociological Review 53 (3) 475-94.

Tyler, K. (2004) ‘Racism, tradition and reflexivity in a former mining town’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 27 (2) 290-309.

Tyler, K. (2003) ‘The racialised and classed constitution of English village life’, Ethnos 68 (3) 391-412.

Book chapters 

Blamire, J., Tyler, K. and Degnen, C. (forthcoming, 2024) ‘Challenging media representations of Boston, Lincolnshire as “left behind”: ethnographic reflections on everyday racism, xenophobia and non-elite cosmopolitanism’, in Tyler, K., Banducci, S., and Degnen, C. (eds.) Reflections on Polarisation and Inequalities in Brexit Pandemic Times: Fractured Lives in Britain, Routledge.

Tyler, K., Banducci, S. and Degnen, C. (forthcoming, 2024) ‘Introduction: Thinking Brexit and the Pandemic together’, in Tyler, K., Banducci, S., and Degnen, C. (eds.) Reflections on Polarisation and Inequalities in Brexit Pandemic Times: Fractured Lives in Britain, Routledge.

Hoang, J, Patterson, D., Banducci, S. Tyler, K., Stevens, D., Blamire, J, Degnen, C. and Horvath, L. (forthcoming, 2024) Everyday engagements with the BBC across Leave and Remain identities, drawing on survey analysis, ethnographic case studies, ethnographic interviews, in Tyler, K., Banducci, S., and Degnen, C. (eds.) Reflections on Polarisation and Inequalities in Brexit Pandemic Times: Fractured Lives in Britain, Routledge.

Tyler, K. (2010) ‘Baltuju etniskumo dekolonizavimas: domejimasis genetikos mokslu’ (‘Decolonising white ethnicity: postcolonial engagements with genetic science’). In Socialine Antropologija Ethnografija Ir Biotechnologija. Edited by Aukusole Cepaitiene. University of Vilnius Press, pp. 105-17.

 Tyler, K. (2008) ‘Debating the rural and the urban: majority white racialised discourses on the countryside and the city’. In B. Petersson and K Tyler (eds),  Majority Cultures and the Everyday Politics of Ethnic Difference: Whose House is This? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 75-93.

Tyler, K. (2008) ‘Majority cultures and the everyday politics of ethnic difference’. In B. Petersson and K.Tyler (eds), Majority Cultures and the Everyday Politics of Ethnic Difference: Whose House is This? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-14.

Petersson, B. and Tyler, K. (2008) ‘The making and breaking of difference: concluding thoughts’. In B. Petersson and K. Tyler (eds), Majority Cultures and the Everyday Politics of Ethnic Difference: Whose House is This? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 226-37.

Tyler, K. (2007) ‘Race, genetics and inheritance: reflections upon the birth of “black” twins to a “white” IVF mother’. In P. Wade (ed.) Race, Ethnicity and Nation: Perspectives from Kinship and Genetics. Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 33-51.

Tyler, K. (2006) ‘Village people: race, nation, class and the community spirit’. In S. Neal and J. Agyeman (eds), The New Countryside? Ethnicity, Nation and Exclusion in Contemporary Rural Britain. Bristol: Policy Press, pp. 129-48.

Reviews

Tyler, K (2014) ‘White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race’, by M. Hughey, Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (10) 1986-89.

Tyler, K. (2009) ‘The Everyday Language of White Racism’, by J. H. Hill, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (4) 860-1.

Tyler, K. (2008) ‘A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain’, by N. Ali, V. Kalra and S. Sayyid (eds), Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14 (1) 204-6.

Tyler , K. (2005) Reflections on ‘Local Democracy and the Race-relations Amendment Act’, Left Curve 29 112-13.

Tyler , K. (2002) A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience’ by S. Charlesworth, The Sociological Review 50 (2) 303-6.

Published reports

Tyler, K. and O. Jensen (2009) Communities within communities: a longitudinal approach to minority/ majority relationships and social cohesion, ESRC.

Other publications (impact orientated)

Tyler, K. and O. Jensen (2009) Communities within communities: reflections on belonging, ethnicity and neighbourhood relations, a twenty-page booklet summarising key findings for ‘user’ dissemination and impact.

Tyler, K. (2005) ‘Comprehénsion publique des notions de race et de génétique: au apercu des résultats d’une récente recherché au Royaume-Uni’ (see also English translation: ‘A summary of findings of a project that examined public understandings of race and genetics in the UK’), Bulletin of L’Observatoire de la Génétique, Centre de bioethique, Montreal.