Sarah Roberts
PhD Student

Profile

Biography

• PhD in Sociology (In progress), University of York
• MA in Social Research, University of York
• BA with honours in Sociology (First Class), University of York

Sarah Roberts has a first class honours degree in Sociology and has recently completed her Masters in Social Research Methods here at the University of York. She is now in the second year of her PhD which explores the emotional labour, relational dynamics and ethics of psychic and mediumship work and practices.

Her interests include qualitative methodology and reflexivity, emotion theory and interaction, extraordinary practices, identity, and the dynamics of community and service user provision.

Supervisor: Dr Merran Toerien
Registration: Full Time MPhil / PhD

Research

Overview

Sarah’s doctorial research adopts a primarily qualitative approach reflecting upon concepts such as ‘emotional labour’, ‘emotion management’ and ‘body work’ in order to examine the relational and ethical complexities of mediumship and psychic service encounters. Practitioners promote eclectic mixes of new age and parapsychological phenomena to mainly female clients. They also focus upon life and relationship complexities, self esteem and health issues, and grieving so in many ways reflect provision offered within the family or conventional health and counselling practice.

It is clear then that mediums and psychics offer a form of therapeutic orientated consultation which requires relational skill. Acknowledging that these practices are emotional and embodied but also managed social interactions, Sarah explores esoteric and cultural feeling rules in relation to the social presentation of the psychic practitioner and the consumer.

Moreover, these practitioners explicitly orient to the ethical and emotional implications of their work but also have limited standardised codes of conduct to abide by. Despite this there has been upsurge in individuals seeking alternative or what could be termed as ‘New Age’ therapeutic services.

She also examines participants’ understanding of ethical and moral components and explores how such factors guide emotion concepts. The use of these services raises many issues relating to the changing nature of the family, self-help and New- Age culture, feminist and gender concepts, ethics and the commercialization of human emotion.

Research group(s)

Sociology of Emotions Research Network

The Sociology of Emotions Research Network brings together researchers with an interest in emotions who share a range of substantive research themes anddraw upon diverse methodologies'.  The website is at http://socemot.com/

Exploring the Extra-ordinary Network

• provide an agnostic, supportive and interdisciplinary network for those involved in research into extraordinary experiences and phenomena that are often peripheral to mainstream academia;
• to keep each other in the know about what research is going on, what publications are coming to light, and what relevant events are taking place

Teaching

Undergraduate

Sarah teaches first year seminar groups for the Introducing Social Psychology module with will run throughout the year.  She also teaches on Criminology modules.