Sevasti-Melissa Nolas

Staff details

Position Reader

Department Sociology

Email s.nolas (@gold.ac.uk)

Phone +44 (0)20 7078 5007

I am an ethnographer and public scholar with an interdisciplinary background in social psychology, linguistics, and philosophy, and tendency to wander off into anthropological, cultural and gender studies literatures as relevant to the study of human agency and everyday life.

I joined the Department of Sociology in January 2018, following faculty and researcher posts at the University of Sussex (2011-2017), Middlesex University (2010-2011), UCL & The Anna Freud Centre (2008-2010), Birkbeck College (2006-2007) and the London School of Economics (2002-2006). I hold a PhD and MSc in Social Psychology and a BA (Hons) in Linguistics (with Philosophy).

Research Interests

My research theorises human agency and participation in everyday life especially in the experiences of marginalised social groups. I am interested in the ways in which agency, or lack thereof, is lived and experienced in everyday life across cultures and historical periods. I am currently developing ethnographically and cross-culturally informed theory on the relationship between childhood and public life. The ERC funded Connectors Study (2014-2019) which I lead, has enabled me and my colleagues to think about the ways in which children encounter, experience and engage with public life across three different cultural contexts and at a time of precarious socio-economic and political conditions. We continue to write on a variety of topics expanding and experimenting with our understanding of the relationship between childhood and public life, and children’s agency therein, including looking at idioms, play, talk, imagination, memory, and the non-human. As well as creating ethnographically thick descriptions of the relationship between childhood and public life, the research aims to connect childhood with broader political imaginaries (e.g. prefigurative politics, publics, and commons).

You can read more about the study here.

Previous research has engaged critically with child, youth and family welfare, well-being, and social support. At the start of my career I worked for nine years as a contract researcher on interrelated topics of youth inclusion and youth work in London and the North West of England, adult and child mental health in White British and African Caribbean populations, Somali women’s experiences of FMG, Bangladeshi men and women’s experiences of growing old in East London, and London women and children’s experiences of post-domestic violence support. I have also supervised doctoral thesis on youth mentoring in London, experiences of adoption in India, agency in children’s learning in the primary school classroom, and Cypriot women’s experiences of living with breast cancer diagnosis. Across these topics my interest has been to understand people’s everyday lives and lived experiences behind policy and practice descriptions of their circumstances, to think about the ways such policy descriptions enable or inhibit liveable lives and the relationship between suffering and flourishing, and to offer suggestions for more biographical approaches to thinking about personal and social change.

Over the years I been involved in a number of methodological innovation projects. Many of these projects have been multimodal and engaged pieces of ethnographic research, including visual and mobile methods, as well as experiments in publics creating methodologies. I also have experience in transferring methods for mapping children’s and young people’s important relationships (ecomapping) from traditional pen and paper to the tablets using haptic technology (in collaboration with computer science colleagues).

I love working in interdisciplinary teams.

I would be very happy to hear from prospective doctoral students or postdoctoral researchers wanting to work in any of the above topic areas or methods.

Publications and research outputs

Edited Book

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan, eds. 2018. Political Activism across the the Life Course. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9780815385332

Book Section

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2021. ‘This Parenting Lark’: Idiomatic Ways of Knowing and an Epistemology of Paying Adequate Attention. In: Francisco Martínez; Lili Di Puppo and Martin Demant Frederiksen, eds. Peripheral Methodologies: Unlearning, Not-knowing and Ethnographic Limits. London: Routledge, pp. 45-60. ISBN 9781350173071

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2020. Child Welfare. In: Dan Cook, ed. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies. London: Sage, pp. 277-282. ISBN 9781473942929

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2020. Childhood publics. In: Dan Cook, ed. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies. London: Sage. ISBN 9781473942929

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2020. Children as Photographers. In: Dan Cook, ed. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies. London: Sage. ISBN 9781473942929

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2020. Children as Photographers. In: Daniel Thomas Cook, ed. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, pp. 406-408. ISBN 9781473942929

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Sanders-McDonagh, Erin and Neville, Lucy. 2018. “Gimme shelter”? Complicating responses to family violence. In: Rachel Rosen and Katherine Twamley, eds. Feminism and the Politics of Childhood: Friends or Foes? London: UCL Press. ISBN 978‑1‑78735‑064‑9

Article

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2021. Touching heritage: Embodied politics in children’s photography. Visual Communication, ISSN 1470-3572

Aruldoss, Vinnarasan; Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2021. Thinking with Feeling: Children’s Emotional Orientations to Public Life. Childhood, 28(1), pp. 56-71. ISSN 0907-5682

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2021. Childhood publics in search of an audience: reflections on the children’s environmental movement. Children’s Geographies, 19(3), pp. 324-331. ISSN 1473-3285

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2021. A ‘love song and lament’: walking the pandemic city with a spray can. entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 4(1), pp. 1-9. ISSN 2516-5860

Pia, Andrea; Batterbury, Simon; Joniak-Lüthi, Agnieszka; LaFlamme, Marcel; Wielander, Gerda; Zerilli, Filippo M.; Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Schubert, Jon; Loubere, Nicholas; Franceschini, Ivan; Walsh, Casey; Mora, Agathe and Varvantakis, Christos. 2020. Labour of Love: An Open Access Manifesto for Freedom, Integrity, and Creativity in the Humanities and Interpretive Social Sciences. The Commonplace,

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2020. Can you hear me? entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 3(1), pp. 1-6. ISSN 2516-5860

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos; Chalkidou, Aspa; Corble, Alice Rose and Apgar, Marina. 2020. Unpacking and undoing ‘the crisis’: database activism for strange times. Discover Society, 80,

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Watters, Charles; Pratt-Boyden, Keira and Maglajlic, Reima Ana. 2020. Place, mobility and social support in refugee mental health. International Journal of Migration, Health, and Social Care, 16(4), pp. 333-348. ISSN 1747-9894

Varvantakis, Christos; Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2019. Photography, Politics and Childhood: Exploring children’s multimodal relations with the public sphere. Visual Studies, 34(3), pp. 266-280. ISSN 1472-586X

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2019. Editorial. entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 2(2), pp. 1-6. ISSN 2516-5860

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2019. Fieldnotes for Amateurs. Social Analysis, 63(3), pp. 130-148. ISSN 0155-977X

Aruldoss, Vinnarasan and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2019. Tracing Indian Girls’ Embodied Orientations Towards Public Life. Gender, Place & Culture, 26(11), pp. 1588-1608. ISSN 0966-369X

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Aruldoss, Vinnarasan and Varvantakis, Christos. 2019. Learning to listen: exploring the idioms of childhood. Sociological Research Online, 24(3), pp. 394-413. ISSN 1360-7804

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2019. Another review process is possible. entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 2(1), pp. 1-5.

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2019. Metaphors we experiment with in multimodal ethnography. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 22(4), pp. 365-378. ISSN 1364-5579

Varvantakis, Christos; Dragonas, Thalia; Askouni, Nelly and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2018. Grounding Childhood (Trans)National Identities in the Everyday. Children & Society, 33(1), pp. 68-81. ISSN 0951-0605

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2018. Review of White Gold: Stories of Breast Milk Sharing. Anthropology in Action, 25(3), pp. 47-49. ISSN 0967-201X

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2018. Multimodal ethnographies between curation and experimentation. entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 1(2), pp. 24-29.

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2018. Νήμα στο χρόνο: πολιτικά βιώματα, μνήμη και βιογραφία (A yarn in time: political experiences, memory and biography). marginalia, 05,

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2018. Entanglements that matter (Editorial). entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 1(1), pp. 1-4.

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2017. Political activism across the life course. Contemporary Social Science, 12(1-2), pp. 1-12. ISSN 2158-2041

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2017. Talking politics in everyday family lives. Contemporary Social Science, 12(1-2), pp. 68-83. ISSN 2158-2041

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2017. Children of the financial crisis. Discover Society, 44,

Mainemelis, Charalampos; Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Tsirogianni, Stavroula. 2016. Surviving a Boundaryless Creative Career. Journal of Management Inquiry, 25(3), pp. 262-285. ISSN 1056-4926

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Maglajlic, Reima; Zlotowitz, Sally and Varvantakis, Christos. 2016. The ‘refugee crisis’: social psychology, public engagement and social action. Social Psychology Review, 18(1), pp. 18-23. ISSN 1369-7862

Sanders-McDonagh, Erin; Neville, Lucy and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2016. from pillar to post: understanding the victimisation of women and children who experience domestic violence in an age of austerity. Feminist Review, 112(1), pp. 60-76. ISSN 0141-7789

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2016. (Im)possible conversations? activism, childhood and everyday life. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 4(1), pp. 252-265.

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2016. Review of S.Mark Pancer’s (2015) The Psychology of Citizenship and Civic Engagement, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Social Psychology Review, 18(1), pp. 46-48. ISSN 1369-7862

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2015. Children's Participation, Childhood Publics and Social Change: A Review. Children & Society, 29(2), pp. 157-167. ISSN 0951-0605

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2014. Towards a new theory of practice for community health psychology. Journal of Health Psychology, 19(1), pp. 126-136. ISSN 1359-1053

Frost, Nollaig and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2013. The Contribution of Pluralistic Qualitative Approaches to Mixed Methods Evaluations. New Directions for Evaluation, 2013(138), pp. 75-84. ISSN 1097-6736

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2013. Exploring young people's and youth workers' experiences of spaces for ‘youth development’: creating cultures of participation. Journal of Youth Studies, 17(1), pp. 26-41. ISSN 1367-6261

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2011. Reflections on the enactment of children's participation rights through research: Between transactional and relational spaces. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(7), pp. 1196-1202. ISSN 0190-7409

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2010. Stories as indicators of practical knowledge: Analysing project workers' talk from a study of participation in a youth inclusion programme. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 21(2), pp. 138-150. ISSN 1052-9284