About our staff

@DrAshlee_C

• Early Career Co-Lead, Steering Committee, RACE.ED
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, School of History, Classics and Archaeology

I hold a BA in Political Science and Women’s Studies (Simon Fraser University, Canada), an MA in Gender Studies (SOAS, University of London), and a PhD in Social Policy (University of Edinburgh). Prior to completing my PhD, I held research and practitioner roles at the Equality Challenge Unit (now Advance HE), centred (a London-based LGBTQ community development organisation), the Trades Union Congress, and the Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy, and Health Research and Methods Training Facility, at Simon Fraser University. 

• Co-Lead, Third Sector, Feminist Gender Equality Network
• Steering Committee, European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Gender and Politics
• Member, Equally Ours Research Network
• International Research Affiliate, Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy, Simon Fraser University 

Summary of research interests

• Britain & Ireland
• Europe
• North America
• Scotland

• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Ideas
• Labour
• Politics
• Society

• Twentieth Century & After

My research is concerned with the historic and contemporary operationalisation of the Black feminist theory of intersectionality in equality policy and practice: its influence and possibilities, as well as the discursive and material resistance it faces. I also have a particular interest in intersectional research methodology, and teach, publish and train in this area. Find out more about my research in these videos:

Intersectionality, unfiltered with Ashlee

Applying intersectionality in research, policy and practice, ConveRACEions series, University of Edinburgh

1. As Research Fellow on the inter- and multidisciplinary AHRC-funded project Gender equalities at work: an interdisciplinary history of 50 years of legislation (PI Prof. Louise Jackson), I explore how UK gender equality legislation was introduced, implemented and changed, in what contexts and with what consequences. I have a particular focus on the relationship between race equality and gender equality legislation, as well as the influence (and silencing) of Black and women of colour theory and activism and intersectionality. The project employs archival research and oral history interviews.

2. My PhD thesis The politics of intersectional practice: Representation, coalition and solidarity (European Consortium for Political Research Joni Lovenduski PhD Prize in Gender and Politics 2021, SPS Outstanding Thesis Award 2020) was based on the first empirical study internationally to explore how both practitioners and policy makers themselves understand how to operationalise ‘intersectionality’, and first in-depth exploration of intersectionality’s applications in the UK. My fieldwork was conducted with three networks of equality organisations (racial justice, feminist, disability rights, LGBTI rights, refugee organisations, and intersectional combinations) in cities in England and Scotland, through case studies employing interviews, focus groups, participant observation and documentary analysis. My PhD was funded by an ESRC studentship.

I developed a typology of five competing concepts of intersectionality circulating in UK third sector equality organising and policy, each with different implications for intersectionally marginalised groups and intersectional justice. Competing concepts are at the heart of the politics of who does intersectionality, and how. The Intersectionality in Practice website shares a report, animation and videos from this project. 

Watch a video of findings presented to the First Minister of Scotland’s National Advisory Council on Women and Girls Circle here.

View videos and slides of the cross-sector Equality and Intersectionality conference (2019) I organised with Leah McCabe, Cat Wayland and the Equality Network here. (SGSSS Research Impact and Knowledge Exchange Competition 2020, Shortlist).

3. As an independent equality research consultant I have completed a range of research projects related to inequalities concerning gender and race.  

• Education and intersectional inequalities, Educational Politics and Policy (honours), School of Social and Political Science
• Ableism in the intersectional matrix: Understanding and applying intersectionality, Introduction to Disability Studies, School of Health in Social Science

• Applying intersectionality in policy and practice, Policy in Action, Masters in Public Policy, School of Social and Political Science
• Education and intersectional inequalities, Education Policy, School of Social and Political Science  
• Intersectional Research Design, Research Design core postgraduate course, School of Social and Political Science 

Reid Arno, 'The Rejection of Anarchism in Black American Liberation Thought, 1954-1993', MSc Intellectual History (Completed)