Faculty of Health, Education and Society
Maria Monaghan joined the University of Northampton as an Associate Lecturer in December 2017, she has worked both full and part time and is currently part-time. Maria has worked across various subjects and levels in the Sociology department with a particular emphasis on Health and Well-being since 2018, more information can be found in teaching section.
Maria holds NVQ awards in both Social Care and Business Administration, an Access Higher Education Diploma in Social Science (Luton), a BA., (Hons.) First Class degree in Sociology and Business Entrepreneurship, (University of Northampton) where she was awarded the Joint Honours Best Performance in Sociology Prize, for her dissertation in 2016/17. Maria has an M.Sc., postgraduate degree in Social Research Methods (Goldsmiths University, London).
As an undergraduate student, Maria was elected as Society Secretary for the Sociology Society (2015/2016), Society President (2016/2017) and was employed by the Faculty of Health, Society and Education (FHSE) as a University Ambassador (2014/2017). In the 3rd year of her undergraduate degree Maria was the elected editor of the editorial board for the first volume of a Sociological Journal under supervision of Jo Downton.
Maria is currently working towards a Ph.D., “Save Lives, Stay Home” or “Save a Life, Give Blood?”: Exploring the NHS Blood and Transplant’s Public Health Messaging in the pandemic media ecology.” Having secured a UKRI scholarship through WRoCHA, on a Collaborate Doctoral Award from 2021- 2025, in collaboration with NHSBT . Maria is under supervision at the Department of Sociological Studies, Sheffield University. Her HE teaching practice and personal academic journey allow her to bring a wealth of experience to her personal academic roles.
The research topics Maria is currently working on include but are not limited to; Trust – which forms an important concern for Public Health Messaging (PHM); How NHSBT seek to ensure blood and convalescent plasma supplies during and post covid; PHM and media ecologies in Pandemic environments; social inequity and access to services. Her Bio-economies approach is framed around Bio-identity, Bio-value and Bio-sociality, corporeal commodification, marketization, bodily gifting, gift narratives and gift economies.
Trained at post graduate level in in both qualitative and quantitative methods, with a preference for qualitative methods, Maria is a mixed methods researcher. Her current focus is on self-representation(s), community, digital media platforms, mediatization and media ecologies. With a keen interest in visual research methods and/or photo elicitation for qualitative inquiry, Maria has incorporated these into both module design and assessment methods – see teaching section.
In the private sector before and during academia Maria’s employment experience includes private tuition for GCSE and A-Level Sociology, in social care settings she has worked as a Health Care Assistant and Senior Health Care Assistant. She has been a Business Development Director, a Market Research Canvassing Manager, a US-UK Charity Delegate, a Drug and Alcohol Rehab Referral Specialist and Business Development Care Manager.
Maria also spent time in the early 2000’s working in the leisure and tourism sector in Europe as a business owner, generating sales for holiday companies, setting up online systems for car hire and airport transfer bookings and creating advertising campaigns.
University News/Blogs:
Since 2017 Maria has taught across modules and levels on the UG programme providing module support, working as co-coordinator, and as module leader. She has assisted in the development of several new modules, and independently designed the new Sociology of Health and Well-being module in 2018. She has been involved in the re-validation of the BA undergraduate programme for sociology. Additionally, Maria has been a Personal Academic Tutor for 80+ students from 2018-2021.
Maria Currently teaches on the following modules:
In previous semesters between 2017-2021 Maria has taught on the following modules:
Year 1 UG/Level 4
Year 2 UG/Level 5
Year 3 UG/Level 6
Currently completing her Ph.D., “Save Lives, Stay Home” or “Save a Life, Give Blood?”: Exploring the NHS Blood and Transplant’s Public Health Messaging in the pandemic media ecology.” Having secured a UKRI scholarship through WRoCHA , on a Collaborate Doctoral Award from 2021- 2025, in collaboration with NHSBT . Maria is under supervision at the Department of Sociological Studies, Sheffield University. This allows Maria to bring a wealth of experience to her personal academic roles.
The research topics Maria is currently working on include but are not limited to; Trust – which forms an important concern for Public Health Messaging (PHM); How NHSBT seek to ensure blood and convalescent plasma supplies during and post covid; PHM and media ecologies in Pandemic environments; social inequity and access to services. Her Bio-economies approach is framed around Bio-identity, Bio-value and Bio-sociality, corporeal commodification, marketization, bodily gifting, gift narratives and gift economies.
Trained at post graduate level in in both qualitative and quantitative methods, with a preference for qualitative methods, Maria is a mixed methods researcher. Her current focus is on self-representation(s), community, digital media platforms, mediatization and media ecologies. With a keen interest in visual research methods and/or photo elicitation for qualitative inquiry, Maria has incorporated these into both module design and assessment methods.
Research Experience/Projects at undergraduate and postgraduate levels included:
UG Dissertation – A sociological enquiry into the rise of childhood Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the UK: Analysis of the Representations of Transgender Youth in the UK media
Mixed-Methods included:
PG Dissertation – A Sociological Inquiry: Educators response to trans identified children’s presence in UK Classrooms. Is there a culture of fear?
Qualitative Methods included:
PG Research Project – Factors affecting Fear of Crime – SPSS analysis.
Studied factors affecting fear of crime including gender, marginalisation, victimisation, exposure to media (TV time), age and levels of trust. This used secondary data from ESS 7 to be able to design and show data analysis elements of quantitative methods to the substantive issue of ‘fear of crime’, utilising Regression Analysis it was an explanatory piece of work informed sociological theory and research in ‘fear of crime’ literature.
PG Research Project – Safeguarding subjective general health: Can education guard against health risk factors?
Research used data from ESS 7 to undertake a 5 stage, multi-level, linear mixed model with fixed effects. Investigating how health and socio-economic factors, are associated with subjective general health and whether education can act as safeguard against adverse factors in relation to subjective general health. This considered adverse factors including unemployment, accommodation and financial hardship in childhood and adulthood.
PG Research Project – Allowing primary school children to walk to school alone: Is there space for a drop and walk to support commuting to school?
Abstract: This Research Proposal reviews current knowledge on active travel to school in fields of social research. It proposes a new initiative and aims to explore the construction of child/parent perspectives in relation to factors that contribute to active travel.
The research project aims to contribute to academic literature where there is a gap by combining “active travel” and “independent travel” into one model or mode of study: Active Independent Mobility (AIM). Through exploration and promotion of Active Independent Mobility (AIM) it uses Participatory Action Research and takes a mixed methods approach. AIM plans to design and implement an intervention (a drop and walk scheme) in collaboration with stakeholders to increase child independence and mobility whilst improving local environments by decreasing pollution and easing traffic management for local councils’ and residents.
UG Research Project, Sociology – Greek legacies, the migration and economic crises, a visual ethnographic account of field work in Athens: “through acts of creation and recreation, we make cultural reality”
Field work on research methods module in Athens centred around several themes including legacy, culture and identity, the economic debt crisis and migrant crisis.
Methods included:
UG Research Project, Business – Entrepreneurship is not self-employment nor is it fixed at ‘founder’: Should we be placing more value on Intrapreneurship?
Project investigating how exploring how key personality traits contribute to opportunity, innovation and entrepreneurship in terms of corporate entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and internal entrepreneurship. Examining entrepreneurship within the firm, rather than traditional modes of examining entrepreneurship via the individual who started the company, ‘the founder’, pointing to how the ‘internal’ or corporate entrepreneur who can renew a business through innovation based initiatives is often overlooked in a search to understand ‘new product’ firms.
Methods included:
In the 3rd year of her undergraduate degree Maria was the elected editor of the editorial board for the first volume of a Sociological Journal under supervision of Jo Downton.
Maria continues to support the publication of this journal and a new volume introduced by Jo Downton on the sociology of death. These can be found in the University Library, they are useful as examples of some assessment types that we have found to be successful for building student employability skills alongside academic skills.
They make interesting reading for A-Level students, undergraduate sociology students or anyone interested in sociology, love and intimacy in the 21st century or the sociology of death.
Online journals can be found below: