Dr Rebecca Leach

Title:	Senior Lecturer in Sociology
Phone:	(+44) 01782 7 33359
Email:	r.leach@keele.ac.uk
Room:	CBC0.027
Roles:	Senior Lecturer School of Sociology and Criminology

Background and Research Interests:

Rebecca Leach is Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Sociology and Criminology. Her research interests lie in the area of consumerism, with specific focus on the home and the role of taste in constructing identities and relationships. Rebecca is currently (2005-2007) Principal Investigator for a £200k project funded by the ESRC/AHRB Cultures of Consumption programme (see www.consume.bbk.ac.uk ).  This project is called Boomers

and Beyond: Intergenerational Consumption and the Mature Imagination and is operated by a team (with Annemarie Money, Simon Biggs and Chris Phillipson ) at Keele University and Kings College , London . It is a multi-method study exploring the consumption patterns of the 1945-54 birth cohort as they near retirement.

Prior to the Boomers project, she was working on research tracing consumers' experience of objects from the At Home with Art (AHWA) project. AHWA was a contemporary art project, curated by Colin Painter, in which contemporary artists produced objects for sale in Homebase (a major DIY store in the UK ). The follow-up research explored the embedding of these ambiguous art-consumer objects within homes and documents the way objects help to configure intimate social relations.

Previous work has explored the theoretical dimensions of consumer culture, the meaning of home and the symbolic construction of 'community' in new private housing estates in the UK . Rebecca has contributed to a number of public debates on these issues, including lectures at Tate Britain and the Institute for Contemporary Arts, and she was consultant for a BBC Radio 4 series "Where the Heart Is?" presented by John McCarthy and produced by Roger Childs.

Rebecca teaches a wide variety of sociology modules, including courses on consumption, the body, sociological and cultural theory, and research methods. As well as teaching a broad spectrum of courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level, she has been Director of the Sociology programme, designer and implementer of the University-wide Complementary Studies programme, founder and Director of the Media, Communication & Culture programme.

PhD Opportunities:

She is interested in supervising doctoral theses on any aspect of the following:

• sociology of consumption
• domestic cultures and the idea of home
• embodied/material social relations, particularly around objects
• locality, community and belonging

Key Publications:

• Leach, R (forthcoming 2010, contracted, first piece submitted) a. Bricolage, b. Interior Design & c. Age and consumption (full essay) entries for Encyclopaedia of Consumer Culture, ed. Dale Southerton, CQ Press.
• Leach, R (Jan 2009) Review of Ellickson, Robert C. The Household: Informal order around the hearth, Times Higher Education Supplement.
• Leach, R., Phillipson, C., Biggs, S., & Money, A. (2008) Sociological Perspectives on the Baby Boomers Quality in Ageing Volume 9(4) December.
• Phillipson, C. Leach R., Money A. and Biggs S. (2008). Social and Cultural Constructions of Ageing: The Case of the Baby Boomers. Sociological Research Online, Volume 13, Issue 3,
  http://www.socresonline.org.uk/13/3/5.html.
• Biggs, S., Phillipson, C., Leach, R. & Money, A. (2007) Baby boomers & adult ageing : issues for social and public policy Quality in ageing : policy, practice and research Vol 8(3) ISSN:1471-7794.
• Biggs, S., Phillipson, C., Leach, R. & Money, A. (2007) The Mature Imagination and Consumption Strategies: age and generation in the development of a United Kingdom baby boomer identity International Journal of Ageing and Later Life Vol 2 (2) pp31-59. ISSN: 1652-8670; DOI: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.07223.1
• Biggs, S., Phillipson, C., Money, A. & Leach, R. (2006) The Age-Shift: observations on social policy, ageism and the dynamics of the adult lifecourse Journal of Social Work Practice Vol 20 (3) pp239-250 ISSN: 0265-0533 DOI:10.1080/02650530600931708.
• Leach, R. (2002). What happened At Home with Art? Tracing the experience of consumers. In C. Painter (ed), Contemporary Art and the Home ( Oxford : Berg).
• Kearon, T. & Leach, R. (2000). 'Invasion of the body snatchers': Burglary reconsidered. Theoretical Criminology Vol 4(4), pp. 451-472.
• Leach, R. (1998) Embodiment and consumption: revisiting Merleau-Ponty . In A. Warde (ed), Conceptualising Consumption. Salford Papers in Sociology No. 23 (ISBN 090448324X). 
• Leach, R. (1998). The Virtual Home . In J. Law et al (eds), Machines, Agency and Desire. Centre for Technology & Culture Papers, University of Oslo (ISBN 8213013093).

In preparation

• Leach R, Phillipson, C, Money, AM & Biggs, S (in preparation) The Bridging Generation? Baby Boomers and Social Change (for Sociological Review).
• Leach, R (Contracted) Review of Consuming Tradition (Outka) for THES.