Panel Chairs

Dr Abigail Locke

Chair of the panel 1A Disability and Health Rights

Dr Locke is a Reader in Applied Social Psychology, specialising in critical social and health psychology. She joined the University of Huddersfield in May 2008 having held previous lectureships at the University of Loughborough, Derby and Coventry. She owe her education to the East Midlands where she obtained her degree in Psychology (1993, Loughborough University), PGCE (1995, University of Leicester) and PhD in Social Psychology (2001, Loughborough University). Her PhD specialised in discursive psychology and she was lucky to be part of the Discourse and Rhetoric Group (DARG) there. She has been asked to give guest lectures and workshops on discourse analysis at a variety of universities and international conferences. She has strong associations with the British Psychological Society. She is the Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Social Psychology Section, am a committee member of the Qualitative Methods in Psychology Section of the BPS, and am a member of the Psychology of Women Section.

Dr Gráinne McMahon

Chair of the panel 1B Gender and Sexuality

Dr McMahon is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the Division of Criminology, Politics and Sociology at the University of Huddersfield. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford (Christ Church) (2009), an MSc Criminology and Criminal Justice at Queen’s University, Belfast (1999), and her BSc (Hons) Social Psychology at the University of Ulster (1998). From 2000 to 2006, she was a Research Officer in the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford, and between 2006 and 2008, she conducted several research studies as an independent consultant researcher. Her current research interests are around youth offending; the criminalisation of young people; desistance from crime; gender, masculinity and crime; and gender, feminism, and women’s rights in modernity. In particular, she is interested in examining female youth offending, gang involvement, violence by and against women, desistance from crime, and the criminalisation of young people, through a feminist lens, and the application of feminist thinking to the wider discipline of criminology. Furthermore, she explores changes in the meaning of ‘feminisms’ in modernity, as well as the challenges of ‘doing feminisms’ in an increasingly corporate organisational structure in higher education.

Dr Pete Woodcock

Chair of the panel 2A Communication, Democracy and Recognition

Dr Woodcock joined the University of Huddersfield in 2005, having previously studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Southampton, where he was awarded his Ph.D. on the political thought of the Levellers. He has an MBA in higher education management from the University of London, and is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He researches on political philosophy in general and English seventeenth century political thought in particular. Pete is also interested in the representation of politics in literature and popular media, plus the politics of moderation. He is also active in pedagogical issues in teaching, and has been developing a number of eLearning resources lectures for his history of political thought module.

Dr Andrew Mycock

Chair of the panel 2B Race and Ethnicity

Mycock is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Huddersfield after previously lecturing at the University of Salford and the University of Manchester. He was promoted to Reader in August 2011 and was appointed as a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority in December 2011. He is a co-founder of the Academy for British and Irish Studies based at the University of Huddersfield, a co-convenor of the Politics Studies Association Britishness Specialist Group,  and he is a regular commentator on local and national media and also regularly contribute to Open Democracy.

Dr Mycock has published widely about the legacy of British Empire and the impact of devolution, immigration and multiculturalism. He is also interested in contemporary politics across the Commonwealth. His recent work has focused on the development of active citizenship and democratic participation of young people in the UK. He served on the Ministry of Justice Youth Citizenship Commission in 2008-9. The Commission reported to government in June 2009 (research and final reports). He has published widely on issues of youth citizenship and government youth initiatives such as National Citizen Service.