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Dr Lydia Martens

Current position: Senior Lecturer in Sociology, School of Criminology, Education, Sociology and
Social Work, and Director of Postgraduate Training (Social Sciences), Keele University.

Qualifications: Ph.D. University of Glasgow, M.A. Social Sciences (Joint Honours in Sociology and
Political Economy) University of Glasgow.

Short Research Biog:


Interest in the sociology of consumption was initially connected with an interest in the emerging
sociology of food and eating, which got me my first research job with Alan Warde in 1994, studying
eating out in England in a project that was part of the Nation’s Diet programme. As sociologists, we
were particularly interested in the social relations around eating, and I concentrated my efforts on
thinking through the connections between commercial and domestic modes of delivery and
consumption. ‘The family’ and domestic relations were paramount here. After moving into lecturing
positions and teaching courses on consumption and on food & eating, whilst also participating in the
European Sociological Association consumption network, I started shaping research ideas on domestic
kitchen practices and children’s consumption with Sue Scott and Dale Southerton. Whilst the domestic
kitchen practices project received funding, we did not manage to convince reviewers of the Cultures of
Consumption programme about the urgency of researching the parent-child relationship through
consumption practices in households with children of different ages. We were more successful in
communicating with European and British colleagues; something evidenced by the invitations to
present lectures, and some of our and my central ideas were published in the Journal of Consumer
Culture and the British Journal of the Sociology of Education (see below). Meanwhile, the domestic
kitchen practices research and associated content analysis of Good Housekeeping magazines resulted in
work on cleanliness, domestic care and caring, and a focus on children and safety. Because of
frustrations with getting funding, I have been visiting The Baby Show since 2005 for ethnographic
fieldwork on the commercial world around early parenthood and childhood. As observed in the
Children’s Plan, we know relatively little about how consumer culture and consumerism impact on the
world of the young child and the new parent. For an overview of my current research activities, see
http://www.keele.ac.uk/research/lcs/membership/martens.htm.

Research Projects, Funding and Consultancies


Constructions of Adulthood and Early Childhood at The Baby Show. Ongoing ethnographic research,
2005-2008 & content analysis of new parent magazines.
Principal Investigator, ‘Domestic Kitchen Practices: Routine, Reflexivity and Risk’, ESRC-funded
project (award no. RES000220014), 2002-2004.
Research consultant on the comparative mixed methods analysis of the EU Trust in Food project, 2004
and on the EU Welfare Quality project, 2004-8.

Selected Publications
Casey, E and Martens, L (Eds.) (2007) Gender and Consumption: Domestic Cultures, Intimate Life and
Markets, Ashgate.
Martens, L and Casey, E (2007) Afterword: Theorising Gender and Consumption, in Casey, E and
Martens, L (Eds.) Gender and Consumption: Material Culture and the Commercialisation of
Everyday Life, Ashgate.
Martens, L (2007) The Visible and Invisible: (De)regulation in contemporary cleaning practices. In
Rosie Cox and Ben Campkin (Eds.) (2007) Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and
Contamination. London: I.B. Taurus.
Martens, L and Scott, S (2006) Under the Kitchen Surface: Domestic products and conflicting
constructions of home. Home Cultures. Vol 3(1).
Martens, L and Scott, S (2005) ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Cleaning’: Representations of Domestic
Practice and Products in Good Housekeeping Magazine (UK): 1951–2001. Consumption,
Markets and Culture. Vol 8(3): 371-409.
Martens, L (2005) Learning to Consume - Consuming to Learn: Children at the interface between
consumption and education. British Journal of Sociology of Education. Vol. 26 (3) 343-357.
Martens, L, Southerton, D and Scott, S (2004) Bringing Children (and Parents) into the Sociology of
Consumption: Towards a theoretical and empirical agenda. Journal of Consumer Culture. Vol
4(2):155-182.
Warde, A and Martens, L (2000) Eating Out: Social Differentiation, Consumption and Pleasure,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge xi + 246p.
Martens, L and Warde, A (1999) Power and Resistance around the Dinner Table, in Hearn, J &
Roseneil, S eds, Consuming Cultures: Power and Resistance, MacMillan, London, 91-108.

Recent Keynote and Invited Lectures


Invited lecture, 'Changing Families, Changing Food' Interdisciplinary Research Programme
(Leverhulme Trust), University of Sheffield, February 2008.
Invited speaker, seminar on ‘Paths to researching everyday life in the (near) future - stepping out of the
frames of the disciplines,’ University of Helsinki, Finland, April 2008.
Invited Keynote Speaker at the Korean Public Administration Association Event, Seoul, South Korea,
October 2008.
Invited Keynote Speaker at the ‘Identités socio-culturelles: Interaction et représentation’ Conference,
University of Luxumbourg, October 2008.

‘The Cute, the Spectacle and the Practical: Narratives of new parents and babies at The Baby Show’,
invited paper presentation at the Sociology Seminar Series, Keele University, October 2007.
‘Doing the Dirty Work: Researching Kitchen Practices,’ invited lecture for the British Sociological
Association’s Food Study Group, University of Westminster, September 2007.
‘The Home is a Safe Haven, or is it? Constructions of everyday life in cleaning products’, invited paper
for the Research Institute for Life Course Studies Launch event, Keele University, January
2007.
‘Pleasure or Problem?: Contemporary cultural constructions around children’s food consumption in
affluent societies’, invited lecture at the ESRC seminar series Food Consumption Dilemmas in
a Global Context, Cardiff University, November, 2005.
‘Safety, Safety, Safety for Small Fry’: The conjoining of children and danger in representations of
domestic products’, invited presentation for the spot-light session “Redefining Childhood and
Adulthood in Consumer Culture” at the Childhood2005 conference in Olso, Norway, June
2005. Also at SIFO (National Institute for Consumer Research, Norway), June 2005.
‘Getting under the Kitchen Surface: Interconnecting consumer culture and domestic practices’, invited
lecture at the Environment Research Group Seminar Series, School of City and Regional
Planning, Cardiff University, April 2005.
‘Learning to Consume - Consuming to Learn: Children at the interface between consumption and
education’, invited keynote address at The Commercialised Childhood Research Seminar,
Danish University of Education, June 2004.
‘Children at the Interface between Consumption and Education’, invited lecture presented at the ESRC
seminar series ‘Reconfiguring Sociology of Education’, Graduate School of Education,
University of Bristol, December 2003.
‘Germs and Domestic Consumption’, invited lecture presented at the Sociology Department Seminar
Series, Sheffield University, April 2003.

Offices held
2000-2008 Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC),
The University of Manchester.
2001-2004 Convenor of the BSA Consumption Study Group
2004-2006 Chair of the International Strategies in Qualitative Research Conference Planning
Group
2007 Co-convenor of the European Sociological Association Consumption Study Network

Organisation of Conferences and Events


2008 ESRC seminar series proposal application: ‘Mothers, Markets and Consumption’ with Professor Pauline
MacLaran (Keele University), January.
2004-2006 Organiser of the International Strategies in Qualitative Research, Durham University, Durham.
2006 Organiser (with Matt Watson) of the ESA Consumption Study Network seminar, Durham University,
Durham.
2002 Organiser (with Emma Casey) of the Gender and Consumption seminar, British Sociological Association
Consumption Study Group, London Metropolitan University, December.
2002 Organiser (with Terry Newholm) of the Ethical Consumption seminar, British Sociological Association
Consumption Study Group, Open University, February
2001 Organiser (with Dale Southerton) of the Consumption & Generation seminar, British Sociological
Association Consumption Study Group, Durham University, August.

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