Rachel Lewis
Assistant Professor
Email: r.lewis.9@warwick.ac.uk
Office: E0.10
Advice and feedback hours:
Wednesdays 10-11
Thursdays 11-12
Pop me an email if you'd like to book in a meeting
Profile
I joined the Sociology department in my current role in September 2023. My research sits at the intersections between Sociology, Education, and Law. My PhD was co-supervised between Applied Linguistics and Sociology here at Warwick, and focused on the discursive realisation of the contemporary citizenship regime in the UK. Prior to taking up my current role, I worked in a research-focused position in the School of Law, and before joining academia, I spent approximately 10 years teaching in the education sector. My research interests coalesce around themes including in/exclusion, bordering, affect, and creative practice.
Research
My current research focuses on the potentials afforded by arts and creative methods as a medium for effecting change in police practice. My particular interest is in productions and transformations from the 'bottom-up' - the ways in which, within creative spaces, policed communities might articulate policing as an endeavour, and might reimagine the very role and function of the police as an institution.
I am co-convenor of the British Sociological Association's Emotions Study Group, where our network engages in a broad range of questions around emotion and affect through our termly seminar series and our annual symposium.
Teaching and administrative roles
The modules I currently convene are:
Sociology of Education (SO123)
Educational Inequalities (SO244)
Undergraduate Dissertation (SO301)
Class and Capitalism in the Neoliberal World (SO126)
I am the Director of the Sociology Joint Honours degrees, and co-lead Sociology's Widening Participation support.
Select publications
Lewis, R. and Hodgson, J. (2025). 'Arts and Policing: imagining new approaches to police-community relationships?' In. Asquith, N. L., Rodgers, J., Clover, J., Cordner, G., Dwyer, A. & Ahmed, R. (Eds). Routledge International Handbook of Critical Policing. London and New York: Routledge.
Lewis, R. 'Anxious vigilance and the production of (il)legitimacy in the UK citizenship regime: “it’s how you sift them out, y’know?”' (2022) Conflict and Society vol 8(1)
Carvalho, H., Chamberlen, A., and Lewis, R. 'Punitiveness beyond criminal justice : punishable and punitive subjects in an era of prevention, anti-migration and austerity' (2020) The British Journal of Criminology vol 60(2)