Dr. Gaynor Bagnall
School of Health and Society
Current positions
Head of Sociology & Criminology
BIOGRAPHY
In 1998 after completing her PhD at Salford on the ‘Production and Consumption of Heritage Sites’, Gaynor moved to a lecturing post at LJMU, before returning to the University as a Senior Lecturer in 2006. Since arriving at Salford Gaynor has worked in a number of academic leadership roles, and is currently Head of Sociology & Criminology. She has also been the Principal Investigator on a number of externally funded research projects in the area of audiences and digital media, museums and heritage, and culture-led regeneration and community engagement.
Areas of research
Audiences, Digital, Culture, Museums, Class
- Connected Lives (Module Leader)
- Culture Power and Identity
- Popular Culture
- Qualitative Research Methods
Gaynor has a long-standing research interest in the areas of culture, heritage, museums and audiences, and a more recent concern with the relationship between museum and heritage site visitors and digital media. Her work has focused on understanding the audiences for and audience engagement with a range of cultural and heritage organizations. She has led and co-led a number of funded (AHRC, ESRC, EPSRC, Arts Council) research projects in these and related areas. Using a range of innovative and co-creative sociological methods she has explored how emotion, meaning, and identity are produced in the consumption of such sites. Research with museums and heritage sites, often in areas of cultural regeneration, has enabled her to examine the interplay of emotion, heritage, and memory and the role they play in enabling forms of belonging, connections and even disconnections to place.
Qualifications
- PhD
Memberships
- Member of the British Sociological Association
- Museums and Heritage
- Audiences
- Culture-led regeneration
- Culture
- Digital media and cultural organisations
- Media and social networks