About us
Our disciplinary background and foci.
The Morgan Centre is based in the Department of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, but the disciplinary backgrounds of our members are diverse, embracing social policy, social work, human geography, cultural studies, gender studies, anthropology, socio-legal studies, biology, and history.
We also work collaboratively with colleagues from other discipline areas and research centres, to develop interdisciplinary work and joint research projects, and regularly welcome international visitors as well as post graduate researchers.
We welcome academics from outside the university, both from other universities as well as non-academics, to our many conferences and research events.
The Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives is home to a group of researchers whose work sheds light on the dynamics of the everyday, the mundane, and the relational.
We have both substantive and methodological research foci within the Centre.
In terms of our substantive areas of research, we explore the relational nature of social life as it is experienced in the everyday through a variety of topics, including air quality, van dwelling, the making of kinship through donor conception, secrecy, girlhood, housing, sibling bereavement and death, among others.
Although our research interests are diverse, what unites us is our interest in the relational experience of the everyday. We work to develop new insights into everyday living, however and wherever it plays out, in ways that are attuned to broader social changes and challenges within contemporary societies.
In terms of our methodological focus, we host internationally recognised expertise in the broad field of qualitative and creative research methodologies. This is reflected in the Centre having hosted two successive ‘Nodes’ of the ESRC’s flagship National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM), as well as our continued commitment and involvement with the NCRM.
We also collaborate with methods@manchester to host the summer school ‘Creative Approaches to Qualitative Research’.
Our teaching portfolio includes undergraduate courses on:
- Getting personal: Intimacy and connectedness in Everyday Life
- Researching culture and society
- Digital sociology
- Families, relationships and everyday life
- Gender, sexuality and culture
- Qualitative research design and methods
- Sociology of life and death
- Material culture: The social life of things
- Dissertation
We also teach postgraduate methods courses, including a master's course on Creative Methods, as well as provide training in research methods for postgraduate students and staff.
We welcome students who are interested in conducting PhD research in our areas of expertise.
If you are interested in doing a PhD with us, please email a member of the Morgan Centre with an outline of your proposed research.
We are committed to collaboration with policymakers, practitioners, professionals and community groups in our research.
Our excellence in this area has been recognised by the University of Manchester and other institutions.
Our approach to public engagements includes, for example:
- Sharing our expertise in doing qualitative research with voluntary organisations.
- Working with local councils, housing associations, private sector organisations and charities, including Crisis and Shelter, to share knowledge about what makes shared housing successful.
- Working with third sector and voluntary organisations to co-produce training and toolkits on creative methods.
- Working with family lawyers, charities and user groups to influence policy affecting families with children conceived using donor eggs or sperm, and sharing the experiences of families with donor-conceived children directly with people in a similar situation via leaflets and videos.
- Working with artists, stakeholders and charities to share findings about how being an egg or sperm donor impact donors’ own everyday lives and relationships.
- Producing information material for egg and sperm donors as part of the ConnecteDNA project, exploring the impact of Direct-to-Consumer DNA testing on families impacted by donor conception.
- Drawing on research findings to produce ‘sociological fiction’ in collaboration with a creative writer, that are now used in fertility counselling session.
Originally named the Morgan Centre for the Study of Relationships and Personal Life, in 2014 we changed our name to the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives to reflect the broadening scope of our research interests.
The Morgan Centre is named after Professor David Morgan in celebration of his major contribution and life-long commitment to the sociology of families and relationships.
We have two types of members: core members and associate members.
Membership is open to University of Manchester staff.
Please contact the Centre directors if you would like more information about becoming a member or an associate member.