Penny Tinkler to research women growing up in postwar Britain
5 January 2017
Dr Penny Tinkler, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, has been awarded an awarded Economic and Social Research Council grant worth over £750k to explore the experience of young women growing up in Britain in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Penny will work with Dr Anne McMunn of University College London on the project starting in April 2017 entitled, ‘Transitions and Mobilities: Girls growing up in Britain 1954-76 and the implications for later-life experience and identity’. “This is a generation of women that are redefining ageing’ Dr Tinkler said, “our research will help policymakers and providers understand and respond to these women's needs and motivations in later life and how they are shaped by their youth”
This will be the first in-depth study of young women’s lives in this period and will provide evidence of the relationship between their lives and the social and cultural change at the time. It will also be the first research to explore the implications of youth events and transitions and related mobilities for women’s later-life at length. In particular, it aims to reveal how youth spatial mobilities operate as a resource in and over time.
The research is based on a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods, including a novel elicitation method. This method is based on qualitative interviews with elicitation using participants’ own girlhood photos and found photos of youth and place, in order to collaboratively plot every day and transitional spatial mobilities over time.