Dr. Lucy Mayblin

Senior Lecturer, Sociology, University of Sheffield.

Co-Director, Sheffield Migration Research Group

Deputy Director, Sheffield New Horizons in Borders and Bordering Doctoral Training Centre

Having started out studying Human Geography and European Politics, my PhD was in Sociology and I consider myself a political sociologist, though my work is interdisciplinary. My research focuses on borders, human rights, policy-making, and the legacies of colonialism. I am particularly interested in how policymakers imagine the world, and how this leads to particular kinds of bordering projects being taken, often with significant social justice implications. I am also interested in how the legacies of 500 years of European colonialism continue to shape the contemporary moment, particularly in Britain. 

I am the author of three books: Asylum After Empire: Postcolonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking (2017) which won the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Memorial Prize in 2018, Impoverishment and Asylum: Social Policy as Slow Violence (2019), and Migration Studies and Colonialism (with Joe Turner, 2020). I have also co-edited two books: Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (2022) and the SAGE Handbook of Global Sociology (2024), and one textbook The Modern World After Colonialism: Remaking the Social Sciences.

My work has been published in a wide range of journals including Sociology, Migration Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Economy and Society, and Citizenship Studies. For more details on my writing see the Books and Articles pages.

In 2020 I won a Philip Leverhulme Prize for Sociology. I am currently working with colleagues on British government responses to small boat Channel crossings, and on methods for post- and decolonial historical research in migration studies. For more on my current projects visit the Projects page.

I am Associate Editor for the Global Social Challenges Journal, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. I was previously an editor of the Global Social Theory website and an advisory board member and contributor to the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project. I am Chair of the Crimes of Solidarity and Humanitarianism project in collaboration with Free Humanitarians.

Qualifications

PhD Sociology, University of Warwick, 2013

MA Social Research Methods, University of Warwick, 2009

MA European Studies, University of Birmingham, 2006

BA Human Geography, University of Birmingham, 2005

Posts

Senior Lecturer, Sociology, University of Sheffield
2018-

Assistant Professor, Sociology, University of Warwick 2016-18

Research Associate and ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellow, Politics, University of Sheffield 2015-16

Postdoctoral Research Associate, ERC LIVEDIFFERENCE research programme, Interdisciplinary Centre for the Social Sciences, University of Sheffield 2013-2014 

1+3 Doctoral Candidate, Sociology, University of Warwick, 2008-2013

Research Assistant, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham 2006-2008