Dr Laura Favaro

Overview

Dr Favaro is a sociologist interested in feminism, education, media and cultural studies and social research methods, having researched and taught in these areas at universities both in England and Spain. Also with qualifications in primary and secondary teaching, she additionally has experience in compulsory education.

Her doctoral thesis, completed in 2017 at City, University of London, examined online consumer magazines for young women, drawing on substantial data that included editorial texts, user-generated content and interviews with producers. Subsequently, she was Research Fellow for the Rey Juan Carlos University project ‘Modalities and practices of resignification of women as victims: From vulnerability to resistance’, funded by the Spanish National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation: Project of Excellence.

In March 2020, Dr Favaro re-joined City to research the current sex/gender dispute – also sometimes known as the ‘gender wars’ – in feminism and academia. Since then, she has developed two different but interrelated studies. The first is an ethnography of feminist academia, with fieldwork including document and social media analysis, as well as 50 in-depth interviews. The second, in collaboration with Dr Vanessa Gash, is a representative survey of social scientists titled ‘The Gender Wars Survey: A Case Study of Working Life in Academia’. With the support of a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SG2122\210460), during Summer 2022 the online survey was fielded in England and in Ireland.

Dr Favaro’s work has been published in journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Australian Feminist Studies and tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, as well as in edited collections such as Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1940s-2000s: The Contemporary Period (2020), Aesthetic Labour: Rethinking Beauty Politics in Neoliberalism (2017), and Collecting Qualitative Data: A Practical Guide to Textual, Media and Virtual Techniques (2017).

Qualifications

• PhD Sociology, City, University of London, United Kingdom, 2017
• Introductory Certificate in Academic Practice (Teaching), City, University of London, United Kingdom, 2015
• MA English Linguistics: New Applications and International Communication, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, 2012
• Bachelor of Education (Primary), University of Alcalá, Spain, 2010
• Postgraduate Certificate in Education (Secondary), University of Alcalá, Spain, 2007
• Postgraduate Diploma in Art Education, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, 2006
• BA (Hons) Sociology, Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom, 2004

Publications by category