Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Alison Rooke BA PhD

Alison is a visual sociologist whose research interests are focused around class, gender and sexualities in urban contexts. She has written on issues relating to cosmopolitanism, visibility, embodiment and belonging in classed and queer cultures, everyday lived complexity.  Alison's PhD research Lesbian Landscapes And Portraits: The Sexual Geographies of Everyday Life was a visual ethnography exploring the interconnections of spatiality and subjectivity for working class lesbian and bisexual women. In addition, Alison has developed expertise in participative action research and evaluation with a specific focus on the social, economic and cultural impact of creativity. Since then she has gone on to work on a range of projects including  Sci:dentity, a project which worked with young transgendered people exploring the science of sex and gender through creative practices, and Signs of the City which is a European participatory youth arts project.

Selected publications

Rooke , Alison. Queering the Field: On the messy matters of ethnographic research
(in) Journal of Lesbian Studies  July 2008. ( forthcoming)

Rooke Alison and Mayo Marjorie.  Active Learning for Active Citizenship: participatory approaches to evaluating a programme to promote citizen participation in England(in) Community Development Journal  (Forthcoming) June 2008

Rooke, Alison “Navigating Embodied Lesbian Cultural Space: Towards a Lesbian Habitus. Space and Culture (special edition on the material and visual cultures of the city). Sage. May 2007. (included in RAE)

Rooke Alison and McNamara Catherine. Scientific Autobiography (in) Creative Encounters Wellcome Trust Publications. 2008

Rooke, Alison.  Case Studies in the Learning and Principles of  Active Citizenship (in) Active Learning for Active Citizenship: and Beyond? M.Mayo (Ed).  Niace Publications. September 2008 (Forthcoming).

Rooke, Alison and Moreno, Monica. Heteroflexibility, Pornonormativity and the Visual Culture of Online Swinging Sites (in) Porn.com.  F. Attwood (Ed) Peter Lang 2008 (forthcoming)

Gidley, Ben and Rooke, Alison. Asdatown: The Genealogy of a Chav Town. (in) Our Working-Class Lives: Classed  Connections and Intersections  Y. Taylor (ed) Ashgate (2008). (forthcoming) 

Rooke, Alison. Telling Trans Stories: (Un)doing the Science of Sex: (in) Transgender Identities: Towards a Social Analysis of Gender Diversity'. S.Hines and T. Sanger (Eds) Routledge 2009 (Forthcoming).

Rooke, Alison. The science of sex or ‘My doctor called it the gender determination department’. Trans youth, science  and art of  producing (trans) gendered space. Gender place and Culture (2008)  Forthcoming.

Rooke, Alison ‘Navigating Normativity:  Everyday Space and Lesbian Subjectivity’(in) Learning the City: Exploring Experience, Politics and Ethnography.   Halliday P and  Dobson S (Eds). Palgrave 2008 (Forthcoming).

Recent Conference Papers

Narrating Urban Encounters and the Spatial Sublime (with Prof Michael Keith) to Urban Encounters Conference, Goldsmiths, University of London. May 2008-05-21

Telling Trans Stories: (Un)doing the Science of Sex: to Panel on Queering the Material: Reflections on Researching the Material from Queer Perspectives at Royal Society of Britsh Geographers Annual Conference, London, August 2008

Reading the Signs of the City presentation atESRC/ LCACE (London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise) Mapping the Horizon for the Creative and Cultural Industries Event Unicorn Theatre, March  2008.

Participatory Action Research In Neighbourhoods: Methodological and ethical dilemmas to Learning from the Local: ‘Social Policy and the Neighbourhood, Goldsmiths, University of London,  April 2008.