Biography

I am a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research’s Medway campus. See the rest of the Sociology team.

My research interests are broadly in the sociology of work, including the meanings work has for people, the (gendered) interconnections between work activities undertaken in different socio-economic relations (e.g. paid and unpaid), and the embodied experience of work.

I have a strong interest in visual and sensory sociology. I collaborate with Lynne Pettinger (University of Essex) in the website nowaytomakealiving.net,which is a sociological space about work and includes different kinds of textual (fictional, autobiographical and analytical), aural, and visual representations of work. 

Career
I joined SSPSSR in 2006. I previously worked as a researcher at the University of Essex, the European University Institute (Italy), Paris V, and Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Education
I completed my PhD in Sociology at the European University Institute (Italy), my MA in Interdisciplinary Women’s Studies at the University of Warwick, and a combined Honours BSc in Society and Government, and French at Aston University.

Find me:
On Academia 
Visit my website

Teaching

Current
I primarily teach on the BSc Social Sciences (Medway) convening or contributing to Introduction to Sociology and Social Research Methods (both Stage 1), Research Methods in Sociology (Stage 2) and the (Stage 3) Dissertation module. I contribute to the MA module Worlds of Work in collaboration with Tim Strangleman and Sarah Vickerstaff.

 I have introduced two new modules in the programme: Gender, Work and Employment in the Twenty-First Century; and Doing Visual Sociology.

Research

Current

• Working with Fish from Sea to Table – supported by a British Academy Small Grant (£5445).
  This project is concerned with the socio-economic process of bringing fish “from sea to table”, and the work that fishmongers and merchants do within this process. It focuses on the work of fish merchants at Billingsgate, and of trade in fish at several UK ports. In particular the project makes use of sound recordings and visual resources. Read my account of a day's work at Billingsgate here.

• Living and Working on Sheppey: Past, present and future – supported by HEFCE knowledge transfer fund, South East Coastal Communities (£85,806 & £14,786).
  In collaboration with Peter Hatton, Clive Arundel and Tim Strangleman, University of Kent; Graham Crow, University of Southampton; community group, ‘Remember Bluetown’; and artists group, TEA; with Ray Pahl as project consultant. This project explores the recent history and changes in working lives in Sheppey in the last decades of the 20th century and into the 21st through oral reminiscence with older people and documenting how young people imagine their futures. Visit the project website.

Past

• 2007 The Labour of Refurbishment
  This was an ethnographic project on the refurbishment of a historic building on the University of Kent’s Medway campus, undertaken in collaboration with Peter Hatton (School of Arts). The research documented the different forms of work that went into the refurbishment, and the building itself as an object of labour, making strong use of the visual. An exhibition from the project took place within the building in December 2007; more information is available here.

• 2004-06 Transformations of Work (ESRC funded)
  The Transformations of Work research programme, directed by Miriam Glucksmann at the University of Essex, explored the concept and activity of work, focusing on interconnections between work undertaken in different socio-economic modes. I analysed configurations and meanings of elder care work in Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK. (See articles in Sociology, European Societies and Sociological Research Online.)

• 2000-04 Women Migrants from East to West (EU funded)
  This oral history project of women migrants from East and Central Europe to Italy and the Netherlands examined the themes of love, work, home, communication, and food in an exploration of what sorts of subjectivity come about through contemporary forms of mobility. It also analysed relationships between migrant and native women, and is published as Women Migrants from East to West (Berghahn Books, 2007).

• 1995-2000 International Comparative Leadership Study (EU funded)
  This cross-national collaborative study of the working lives and career trajectories of men and women in business and politics was published as Gendering Elites (Macmillan, 2000). Building on the survey data, I conducted career history interviews in Belgium, Britain and France for my PhD, a comparative sociological analysis of how careers happen.

Supervision
I welcome PhD students with proposals in any area of visual sociology and work. If you are interested in studying at the University of Kent, please contact me to discuss further.

Current students

• (with Tim Strangleman) Victoria Tedder, Crafting a world of our own: The search for meaning through creative pursuits
• (with Tim Strangleman) Sarah O’Connor, Exploring the Occupational Identity and Dynamics of Intra-Institutional Relationships of the Watch Manager in the Fire Service
• (with Larry Ray) Barbara Adewumi, The New Face of Suburbia - Aspirations of the Black Middle Class
  

Publications

Edited Books

(2007) Passerini, Luisa, Dawn Lyon, Enrica Capussotti and Ioanna Laliotou (eds) Women Migrants from East to West: Gender, Mobility and Belonging in Contemporary Europe. Berghahn Books.

Articles

• Lyon, Dawn, Bethany Morgan, and Graham Crow (forthcoming 2012) ‘Working with material from the Sheppey archive’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology.
• Lyon, Dawn and Les Back (forthcoming 2012), ‘Fish and fishmongers in a global city: socio-economy, craft, and social relations on a London market’, Sociological Research Online.
• Lyon, Dawn (forthcoming 2012) ‘Researching Gender and Work: 30 years on from Women on the Line’ International Working Class History.
• Pettinger, Lynne and Dawn Lyon (forthcoming 2012) ‘No Way to Make a Living.net - Exploring the possibilities of the web for visual and sensory sociologies of work’, Sociological Research Online.
• Cuzzocrea, Valentina and Dawn Lyon (2011) ‘Sociological Conceptualisations of ‘Career’: A Review and Reorientation’ Sociological Compass 5(12): 1029-1043.
• Lyon, Dawn (2010) ‘Intersections and Boundaries of Work and Non-work: The Case of Elder Care in Comparative European Perspective’ European Societies 12(1): 1-23.
• Crow, Graham, Peter Hatton, Dawn Lyon and Tim Strangleman (2009) ‘New Divisions of Labour?: Comparative Thoughts on the Current Recession’, Sociological Research Online, Volume 14, Issue 2/3.
• (2008) (with Miriam Glucksmann) ‘Comparative Configurations of Care Work across Europe’ Sociology 42(1): 101-18.
• (2007) ‘Moral and Cultural Boundaries in Representations of Migrant Women in Italy’ International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care 3(2): 44-56.
• (2006) (with Miriam Glucksmann) ‘Configurations of Care Work: Paid and Unpaid Elder Care in Italy and the Netherlands' Sociological Research Online 11(2).
•  (2006) ‘The Organisation of Care Work in Italy : Gender and Migrant Labor in the New Economy' Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 13(1): 207-24.
• (2004) (with Alison Woodward) ‘Gender, Time and the Top: Cultural Constructions of Time in High Level Careers and Homes', European Journal of Women's Studies 11(2): 205-21.

Book chapters

• Lyon, Dawn (forthcoming 2012) ‘The labour of refurbishment: Space and time, and the building and the body’ in Sarah Pink, Dylan Tutt and Andrew Dainty (eds) Ethnographic Research in the Construction Industry, London: Taylor and Francis.
•  (2007) ‘Moral and Cultural Boundaries in Representations of Migrants: Italy and the Netherlands in Comparative Perspective' Luisa Passerini, Dawn Lyon, Enrica Capussotti and Ioanna Laliotou (eds.) Women Migrants from East to West: Gender, Mobility and Belonging in Contemporary Europe . Berghahn Books.
• (2007) (with Nadejda Alexandrova) ‘Imaginary Geographies: Border-places and ‘Home' in the Narratives of Migrant Women' in Passerini et al. (as above).
• (2007) (with Enrica Capussotti and Ioanna Laliotou) ‘Migrant Women in Work' in Passerini et al . (as above).
• (2000) (with Alison Woodward) ‘Gendered Time and Women's Access to Power', in Mino Vianello and Gwen Moore (eds.) Gendering Elites, Economic and Political Leadership in 27 Industrialised Countries . Basingstoke : Macmillan.

Activity

Professional activities

I coordinate together with Lynne Pettinger (University of Essex) the website http://nowaytomakealiving.net which was launched in October 2009.