Personal statement

Yvette Taylor is Professor of Education and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and held senior leadership roles including Head of the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research at LSBU (2011–15), Research Director (2017–19) and Deputy Head (2019–20) at the University of Strathclyde, leading strategic initiatives and REF submissions. She is currently Research Director and Co-Director of Postgraduate Research (2025- ).

Yvette’s research centres on queer life, class inequality, education, and social justice, working closely with policymakers, artists, and community organisations. Collaborations include projects with the Scottish Government on LGBTQ+ lives during the pandemic, Make Your Mark on inclusive volunteering, and Scottish Ballet’s Safe to be Me, exploring inclusive school curricula.

Yvette is the author of multiple books on queer-class formations, most recently Working-Class Queers: Time, Place and Politics (Pluto, 2023) widely recognised for its intervention into class inequality within queer studies. Her RSE Personal Research Fellowship, Queer Futures: Alternative Models for Social Justice, launched the Queer and the Cost of Living Crisis seminar series and a programme of Queer Social Justice Pop-Ups, including work at Pride events with artists and designers.

Yvette’s higher education research includes funded projects on LGBTQ+ carers in universities, estranged and care-experienced students, queer precarity, and redistributing resources in the Queer International Academy. She has edited major collections including Queer Precarities in and out of Higher Education, The Handbook of Imposter Syndrome, and the open-access Feminism in Our Times: Crises, Connections and Cares. Her arts-based work appears in open-access zines and the ESRC-funded Exhibiting Queer Social Justice project. The forthcoming Queer in a Wee Place: Small Nations, Sexuality and Scotland (Bloomsbury, 2026) will be open access and interdisciplinary.

Funded research includes ESRC and Nuffield projects on class, gender, justice inequalities, and the EU-Norface project on LGBTQ+ life-course experiences across Europe. Yvette has held international visiting positions at Rutgers (Fulbright), ANU, Concordia, and Sciences Po etc..

She welcomes PhD supervision across a wide range of topics including e.g. queer and trans studies, class and education, disability, gender and schooling, and queer-feminist methods. Yvette regularly organises  the SGSSS Spring into Methods Feminist Research Methods workshops.