Katy Sian
Senior Lecturer

Profile

Biography

Katy Sian is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology, she joined the department in 2015. Katy completed her PhD in 2009 at the University of Leeds in the School of Sociology and Social Policy. From 2010-2012 she worked on the TOLERACE project (FP7) as a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS) University of Leeds, exploring the semantics of tolerance and anti-racism across Europe.

Katy moved to the University of Manchester in 2012 where she held a lecturing position in Sociology before taking up a Hallsworth Research Fellowship in 2013, exploring Sikh and Muslim conflict in the global Sikh diaspora. She has held visiting research posts at the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI); the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society (CSRS) at the University of Victoria, Canada; and at the Centro de Estudos Sociais (CES) University of Coimbra, Portugal. Katy is active in the community around anti-racism issues and her research continues to involve her within conversations across third sector and interfaith organizations.

Departmental Roles

• Director of Student Processes

University roles

• University Senate member for the Faculty of Social Sciences
• Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre lead for Race and Ethnicity

Research

Overview

My research examines how racialised forms of governance shape experiences of inequality, belonging and social justice. Drawing on critical race theory, decolonial thought and abolitionist approaches, I explore the intersections of race, migration, diaspora and religion to understand how identity, power and the political are constructed and contested. Across these areas, I am interested in how racialised communities navigate and resist structures of oppression, and how research can contribute to more socially just futures.

I am currently a co-investigator at the Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre and lead a project examining the impact of over-policing on young people of colour in Leeds, using participatory and community based approaches.

My commitment to embedding anti-racism in research has further culminated in the development of my Anti Racism Toolkit. The toolkit invites academics and practitioners to reflect upon their methodological and ethical processes to generate research that is driven by social justice.

My research interests fall broadly within the following areas, in which I would also welcome PhD applications:

• Critical race theory
• Post/de-coloniality
• Inter-ethnic relations
• Islamophobia and the war on terror
• Critical Sikh studies
• Migration and Diaspora
• Citizenship and Multiculturalism
• Crime and racialization 

Publications

Selected publications

• Navigating Institutional Racism in British Universties (2019) Palgrave Macmillan: Cham
• Conversations in Postcolonial Thought (Nov 2014) Palgrave: London 
• Unsettling Sikh and Muslim Conflict: Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions and Postcolonial Formations (April 2013) Lexington Books: Lanham
• Racism, Governance and Public Policy: Beyond Human Rights (June 2013) Routledge: London = with S. Sayyid and I. Law
• 'Depoliticizing Decolonization: The Silencing of Palestine in Universities,' Race, Ethnicity and Education, Vol. 28, No. 7, 1–24. Aug 2025
• 'Rethinking Knowledge Production in Sociology: A Critical Analysis of the Conceptual, the Methodological and the Institutional' Social Policy and Society, Vol. 21, No. 1, 42-53, Oct 2021
• 'Surveillance, Islamophobia, and Sikh Bodies in the War on Terror' Islamophobia Studies Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1, 37-52, Fall 2017
• 'Born Radicals? Prevent, Positivism, and ‘Race-Thinking’' Palgrave Communications Journal, Vol. 3, No. 6, 1-8, Oct 2017

Teaching

Overview

My teaching interests centre on critical perspectives within sociology, particularly questions of power, control and racial justice. I examine how inequalities are produced and maintained through broader political, cultural and global processes, and how these shape experiences of crime, harm, and exclusion. I convene Crime, Control and Globalisation and co-teach on Race and Injustice.

Supervision

Current PhD Students

• Harry Strange
• Luping Wang
• Natasha Carlin 

Completed PhD's

I have supervised the following students to completion:

• Christine Jackson-Taylor
• Dimitra Mouriki
• Cath Stinton
• Morgane Donse
• Ozge Onay

External Activity

Memberships

• The British Association for Islamic Studies

Professional Affiliations 

• ESRC Peer Review College 
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 

Editorial Roles

• Editorial Board member for Race, Ethnicity and Education journal