Imogen Tyler (PhD, FAcSS) is Professor of Sociology. She is internationally renowned for her contributions to Social Theory and the Sociology of Inequalities. Her research on topics such as stigma, social abjection, social (in)justice, activism and social movements, social class, poverty and welfare, race and racisms, borders and citizenship has had global reach. Her published research has been widely adopted on university curricula across the world and is highly cited; Imogen is ranked in the world’s top 2% scientists (Stanford-Elsevier Rankings). Over the course of her career, Imogen has given 50+ Keynote and Public Lectures. She has received many awards and recognitions, including a Lancaster University Award for Outstanding Contribution to Research (2014) and a Philip Leverhulme Prize (2015). Revolting Subjects was shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and the Philip Abrams Prize. In 2018 Imogen was conferred as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and is a serving council member (elected trustee) of the Academy of Social Sciences (2023- current).

Imogen is best known for her monographs Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain (2015); and Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality (2020) - which combined have sold several thousand copies. She has published 50+ journal articles and book chapters, including the edited volumes The Sociology of Stigma (2018) and Immigrant Protest (2013), and field-defining articles such as ‘Classificatory Struggles: Class, Culture and Inequality in Neoliberal Times’ (2015); ‘Designed to Fail: A Biopolitics of British Citizenship’(2009); ‘Against Abjection’ (2009); ‘”Chav Mum, Chav Scum”: Class disgust in contemporary Britain’ (2008).

Imogen has been awarded funding by the ESRC (2010, 2012); the Leverhulme Trust (2010, 2015), the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) (2009), and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2022). She has secured UKRI funding for 10 Doctoral scholarships (AHRC and ESRC) and has supervised 20+ PhD projects and 4 funded postdoctoral research projects (Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme, Swedish and Finish Research Councils). Imogen is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College and regularly reviews grants and fellowship applications for UK and European universities, institutes and other grant giving bodies. She has served on several international advisory boards and is currently on the advisory board for the European Research Council project ‘Who Counts?’ re-examining the Profile, Drivers and Depth of Poverty across Europe (Autonomous University of Barcelona).

A passionate believer in public sociology, Imogen has engaged and collaborated with multiple civil society, think tank, charitable, community, and heritage organisations and groups. Her recent work with Lancaster Museums Service on the 18th century Black Lancastrians project, (funded by Art Fund, Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage and Association for Independent Museums), was the runner up for the 2023 Independent Museums Association Decolonizing Award & was featured as a GEM/Art-Fund re-imagining engagement case study. Other recent examples of engagement include her work with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s  ‘Stigma, Poverty and Power: Stigma Free Futures’ project, and work with Poverty Truth Network and Lancaster Black History Group. Imogen has co-produced a number of publications, podcasts, videos and educational resources designed to make sociological research accessible to wider public and policy audiences For some recent examples, see, ‘Poverty stigma: a glue that holds poverty in place ‘(JRF Report, 2024); ‘Seeking Freedom: 18th-Century Black Lives in Northern England: Key Stage 2 Teaching Resource (2024, & adopted by the Morecambe Bay Curriculum); ‘the Stigma Conversations’ Podcast Series; ‘Enclosures and the Making of Modern Britain’, a Connected Sociologies Video Lecture [9k+ views]; and her graphic novel ‘From Stigma Power to Black Power’ (2018).

Imogen’s current research is focused on two connected projects:

• Hard Times: Poverty and Protest in Britain
• Elemental Inequalities: Struggles for Life Against State-Sanctioned Killing

These projects have different areas of focus. What connects them is the use of historical and sociological research methods - including participatory research with ‘communities of resistance’ -- to critically examine the social, political and environmental permacrisis of the current conjuncture (and in doing, to help us to imagine and build alternatives). These two projects (variously) develop theories of ‘thanatocracy’ (Linebaugh & Kelley, 2024), ‘necroeconomics’ (Skeggs, 2020), ‘artificial scarcity’ (Heron, Milburn & Russell, 2025); and ‘asset-class struggle’ (Swyngedouw & Ward, 2024). These projects have emerged out Imogen’s ongoing research and engagement with clinicians, medics, social & care workers, charities and activists working at the front-line of the UK's cumulative welfare crisis, including work with communities most affected by deepening poverty and ill-health within the British state, and activist groups practicing and forging alternative futures.

Imogen currently convenes and teaches the 2^nd year core UG module, Global Social Theory and the 2^nd year UG option module, Welfare States: Histories and Futures, contributes lectures across the UG and PGT sociology programme, and supervises UG & PGT dissertation projects.

Google Scholar Profile

Personal Website: https://imogentyler.uk/

Primary Research Interests: Social and Economic Inequalities; Health Inequalities; Social Theory; Historical Sociology; Stigma (Power); Welfare, Poverty; Housing; Class Struggle; Race and Anti-Racism; Colonial Capitalist Enclosures; Rural Inequalities; Land, Resource and Asset Stuggles; Commons and Commoning; Colonialism and Decolonisation; Borders and Citizenship;  Social and Health Impacts of Climate and Environmental Change; Waste Colonialism; Pollution; Social Movements; Historical and Genealogical Methods and Approaches; Community-Aligned and Participatory Research Methods: Community Engagement; Scholar & Art-Activism (including Heritage and Museums).

PhD Supervision 

Imogen welcomes applications from MPhil, PhD and Post-Doctoral researchers working in any area of social inequalities (broadly defined) and particularly welcomes applicants from under-represented backgrounds who want to actively engage with communities and publics beyond academia and seek to produce "actionable knowledge" in the service of more just and equitable futures.

Recent and current examples of MPhil/PhD projects supervised include Victoria Frausin’s ‘Waste Colonialism: Grounding Theory Using Participatory Methods in The North of England’; Daisy Barker’s ESRC project ‘The Covid-19 Pandemic, Citizens Advice, and Continual Crises: Living with the Collapse of the Political Economy of Social Reproduction’ and Dan Harrison’s ESRC-CASE project ‘Disabling Austerity: An Ethnographic Study of the Poverty Truth Movement in Morecambe Bay’.

2024- Advisory Board Member European Research Council Horizon 1.1 Research Project 'Who Counts? Incorporating a ‘Missing Minority’ to Re-examine the Profile, Drivers and Depth of Poverty across Europe', UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA.

2024- ESRC Peer Review College

2024- Co-Chair Lancaster Black History Community Group

2024- Contributing teacher, Lancashire and South Cumbria Population Health Academy

2022- Council Member and Trustee (elected) Academy of Social Sciences

2022-2024 Consultant- Participant Joseph Rowntree Foundation ‘Stigma Free Futures’

2019 Elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Science

2022-2024 Consultant 'Facing the Past' project, Lancashire County Council Museum Service, Association of Independent Museums (AIM) New Stories New Audiences.

2021 Lancaster City Council and Lancaster University INSIGHTS HUB 

2020 Advisory Group Member, Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission

2020 Board Member, Lancaster Black History Community Group

2019- 2024 Trustee (elected), National Poverty Truth Network (UK Charity)

2018-2020 Civic Commissioner, Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission