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:
- Literature review – 5 databases, 42 Journal articles.
- Content Analysis – 332 articles published in 8 UK national newspapers over an 18-month period.
- Online surveys – 109, including open and closed questions – Quantitative data analysis and qualitative thematic data analysis
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:
- Literature review
- Interviews-12 Semi-structured interviews with education professionals,
- Thematic Analysis – Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDAS) was performed using Nvivo software to implement thematic analysis.
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.
- Quantitative Methods included: Literature Review, SPSS Analysis, Report
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.
- Quantitative Methods included: Literature Review, SPSS Analysis, Report
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:
- Interviews – Unstructured interviews with 2 professionals working in an Athenian NGO supporting asylum seekers and local people affected by economic crisis, unemployment, and homelessness.
- Interviews – Semi-structured interviews with youth migrants from Syria.
- Visual Ethnography –Report using photography, observations, interview analysis and reflexive diaries.
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:
- Interviews – Semi-structured interviews with SME managers
- Interviews – Unstructured interviews with SME employees
- Report – Qualitative thematic data analysis