Rosie Read

Dr Rosie Read

  • u_rread at bournemouth dot ac dot uk
  • Principal Academic
UN SDGs:
Back to top

Biography

My qualitative sociological and ethnographic research explores waged and unwaged caring work, volunteering, community, gender, class, feminist social reproduction and the state. My book, due out in early 2026 in the Routledge Sociological Futures series, is entitled 'Undervalued Social Care in the Home and Community: A feminist social reproduction perspective'. Based on detailed qualitative research on family carers, community volunteers and home care workers in southern England, the book develops fresh theoretical perspectives on the persistent undervaluing of these roles, despite their critical importance within adult social care.

Recently I was a co-investigator on a large project about impact of community-led organisations on health in deprived areas of the UK, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Earlier ethnographic and qualitative research has been undertaken in the Czech Republic and the UK, funded by the UK Research Council, the British Academy and non-profit sector organisations.

Favourites

Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person's work contributes towards the following SDGs:

Good health and well-being

"Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages"

more information

Gender equality

"Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls"

more information

Decent work and economic growth

"Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all"

more information

Sustainable cities and communities

"Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable"

more information

Journal Articles

  • Read, R., 2024. Stay Home, Sustain Lives: Pandemic Support Networks and Social Reproduction. Sociology.
  • Roy, M.J., Rendall, J., Clewett, E., McMullan, J., Read, R., McLean, J., O'Hare, L., Bertotti, M., Kelly, M., Baker, R., 2024. Is Government Policy a Barrier or Facilitator to the Work of Place-Based Community-led Nonprofits? Nonprofit Policy Forum.
  • Read, R., 2021. Unwaged labour intensified: Volunteer management and work targets at a UK charity. Sociological Review, 69 (1), 223-239.
  • Read, R., 2019. Caring Values and the Value of Care: Women, Maternalism and Caring Work in the Czech Republic. Contemporary European History, 28 (4), 500-511.
  • Read, R., Fenge, L.A., 2019. What does Brexit mean for the UK social care workforce? Perspectives from the recruitment and retention frontline. Health and Social Care in the Community, 27 (3), 676-682.
  • Read, R., 2014. Images of care, boundaries of the state: Volunteering and civil society in Czech health care. Social Analysis, 58 (3), 90-160.
  • Jones, K., Fenge, L.-A., Read, R., Cash, M., 2013. Collecting Older Lesbians' and Gay Men's Stories of Rural Life in South West England and Wales: "We Were Obviously Gay Girls ... (So) He Removed His Cow From Our Field". Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 14 (2).
  • Read, R., 2011. Humanising healthcare: Volunteered caring and the free gift in Czech hospitals. Anthropology of East Europe Review, 29, 50-59.
  • Chell, E., Karataş-Özkan, M., Read, R., 2010. Exploring women academics' involvement in science entrepreneurship: A structuration view.
  • Read, R., 2010. Creating reflexive volunteers? Young people's participation in Czech hospital volunteer programs. Journal of Youth Studies, 13, 549-563.
  • Fenge, L.-A., Jones, K., Read, R., 2010. Connecting participatory methods in a study of older lesbian and gay citizens in rural areas. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 9, 320-333.
  • Domínguez, D., Beaulieu, A., Estalella, A., Gómez, E., Schnettler, B., Read, R., 2007. Virtual ethnography. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung, 8 (3).
  • Read, R., 2007. Labour and love: competing constructions of 'care' in a Czech nursing home. Critique of Anthropology, 27, 203-222.
  • Read, R., Thelen, T.. Social Security and Care After Socialism: Reconfigurations of public and private. Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology, 50.
  • Read, R., 2005. Scopic Regimes and the Observational Approach: Ethnographic Filmmaking in a Czech Institution. Visual Anthropology, 18.
  • McCajor Hall, T., Read, R.. Guest editors' notes: Special issue of Ethnographies of Czechs, Slovaks and Serbs. Anthropology of East Europe Review, 23.

Books

Chapters

  • Read, R., 2025. ‘I don’t think they were clapping for me’. Home care workers during the covid-19 pandemic. In: Tyler, K., Banducci, S., Degnan, C., eds. Reflections on polarisation and inequalities in Brexit Pandemic Times: Fractured Lives in Britain.. London: Routledge, 151-175.
  • Read, R., 2025. ‘I Don't Think they were Clapping for Me’: Home Care Workers during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Reflections on Polarisation and Inequalities in Brexit Pandemic Times.
  • Read, R., 2017. Images of care, boundaries of the state: Volunteering and civil society in czech health care. Stategraphy Toward A Relational Anthropology of the State.
  • Read, R., 2017. Images of care, boundaries of the state: Volunteering and civil society in czech health care. Stategraphy Toward A Relational Anthropology of the State.
  • Read, R., 2011. Gender, Welfare and Volunteering in Czech Hospitals. In: Jäppinen, M., Kulmala, M., Saarinen, A., eds. Gazing at Welfare, Gender and Agency in Post-Socialist Countries. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars.
  • Read, R.. Nuns, Fundraising and Volunteering. The Gifting of Care in Czech Services for the Elderly and Infirm. In: Leutloff Grandits, C., Peleikis, A., Thelen, T., eds. Social Security in Religious Networks: Anthropological Perspectives on New Risks and Ambivalences. Oxford, England: Berghahn Books.
  • Read, R.. Embodied Caring / Caring for Bodies. In: Lammer, C., Pichler, C., Sawchuk, K., eds. Embodiment. Vienna, Austria: Löcker.
  • Read, R., 2005. Altering Care: Gifts and Emotion in Nursing Practice within a Czech Nursing Home. In: Haukenes, H., Pine, F., eds. Generations, Kinship and care. Gendered Provisions of Social Security in Central Eastern Europe. Bergen, Norway: Center for Women's and Gender Research, 137-162.

Films

PhD Students

  • Hazel Tennant. UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative: What are the barriers, challenges and opportunities for successful implementation?, (In progress)
  • Krista Sharp. Understanding the lived experiences of young carers and how they are shaped by policy and legislation, (In progress)
  • Jo McGreal. What is the use of research to community led organisations: a critical realist exploration, (In progress)
  • Martin Handford, 2009. Homelessness and Citizenship: Exploring the Meaning and Negotiation of Place, Space and Geography for Rough Sleepers., (Completed)
  • William Haydock, 2009. Gender, Class and ‘Binge’ Drinking: An Ethnographic Study of the Night Time Economy in a Southern English Town., (Completed)
  • Lee-Ann Fenge. Releasing Potential? The Challenges of Widening Participation for Students, Further Education and Higher Education, (Completed)

Profile of Teaching UG

  • Doing Ethnographic Research
  • Understanding Globalisation
  • Culture and Society
  • Introduction to Social Research

Invited Lectures

  • Volunteering and the Welfare State, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 11 Dec 2025 more
  • Stay home, sustain lives. Pandemic support network, Online, 11 Oct 2023 more
  • Volunteerism, work and the state, University of Pristina, Kosovo, 16 May 2022 more

Grants

  • Staying home, connecting care: Infrastructures and experiences of home care and voluntary support given and received at home during the UK Covid 19 lockdown and beyond. (British Academy, 01 Jul 2020). Completed
  • CommonHealth Assets: a realist evaluation of how community led organisations impact on health, wellbeing and health inequalities (National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), 01 Jun 2020). Completed
  • CommonHealth Assets: a realist evaluation of how community led organisations impact on health, wellbeing and health inequalities (National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), 01 Jun 2020). Completed
  • QR Collab MF Studentship 2018: Unicef Baby Friendly Initiative: A case study of the challenges, /barriers and opportunities affecting the implementation of standards in maternity hospital services. (Dorset Country Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, 17 Sep 2018). In Progress
  • What Does Brexit Mean for Social Care? (Bournemouth University, 09 Jan 2017). Completed
  • Developing Student-Community Research Collaborations to Enhance Fusion and BU Reputation in Sociology and Anthropology (Bournemouth University Fusion Investment Fund, 15 Jan 2015). Completed
  • Sexual Harassment in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry (Bournemouth University, 01 Jul 2014). Completed
  • Chicha Power: Transforming Promotional Cultures the Peruvian Way (Bournemouth University, 01 Mar 2013). Completed
  • Grey and Pleasant Land? An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Connectivity of Older People in Rural Civic Society (RCUK New Dynamics of Ageing programme, 01 Jan 2010). Completed
  • Volunteering Care: The Gendered Politics of Voluntary Networks in Three Czech Hospitals (The British Academy, 01 Jan 2008). Completed

External Responsibilities

Public Engagement & Outreach Activities

  • Jury member on The Sociological Review 2023 Best Paper Prize, July – Sept 2024. (05 Dec 2024)
  • British Academy / Wellcome Trust symposium on using social sciences and humanities to understand health and social care during the pandemic (16 Jan 2024)
  • Moving towards successful social care for older people in the UK: where are we now? Where are we going?' Using social sciences and humanities to set the agenda for social care. (25 Jan 2022)

Conference Presentations

  • Welfare Futures Research Seminar Series, ‘Being there for our neighbours’. Volunteering during the pandemic and the depoliticization of volunteer support networks in England., 11 Dec 2025, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 7th Transforming Care Conference, Social care crisis and social inequalities: moving away from ‘zero sum’ approaches, 25 Jun 2025, University of Helsinki, Finland
  • Women’s Wellbeing Workshop, Care, wellbeing and neoliberalism: Feminist critiques, 02 Jun 2025, London
  • 7th Czech Association for Social Anthropology Biennial Conference, When ‘from below’ is also ‘from above’: mutual aid and solidarity in southern England during the coronavirus pandemic, 06 Oct 2023, Prague, Czech Republic
  • Transforming Care Conference, The Politics of Pandemic Mutual Aid, 26 Jun 2023, Sheffield, UK
  • International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) 16th Congress, "Living Uncertainty", The Politics of Pandemic Mutual Aid, 07 Jun 2023, Brno, Czech Republic
  • Centre for Seldom Heard Voices Research Centre - Research Seminar Series Seminar, Carers Experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic, 23 Feb 2022, Bournemouth University
  • International Conference 'Society after the Covid-19 pandemic: Challenges and Solutions', Reproductive labour in pandemic times: unwaged caring work in the UK’s social care system during the Covid-19 pandemic, 23 Nov 2021, University of Prishtina, Kosovo
  • British Sociological Association, Work Employment Society conference, Reproductive labour during pandemic times: Assessing the caring work of family carers, waged home care workers and volunteers during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-1, 25 Aug 2021, online
  • International Workshop organised by Tallinn University, ‘(Remote) work and Covid: mobility, safety, and health at the time of the pandemic’, Caring during Covid: experiences of space, time and risk, 17 Jun 2021, online
  • European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial Conference, Unwaged labour, volunteer work and social reproduction, 20 Jul 2020, Online
  • International workshop organised by the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarian Studies (HAIT), Dresden, Germany, 'Care and Volunteering in Transformation', Continuities and ruptures of care: volunteering, civil society and maternalism in the Czech Republic., 13 Jul 2020, Online

Qualifications

  • PGCE in Research Degree Supervision (Bournemouth University, 2007)
  • PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media (University of Manchester, 2002)
  • MA in Visual Anthropology (Manchester University, 1996)
  • BA (Hons) in Anthropology and Religious Studies (Newcastle University, 1994)

Honours

  • Higher Education Academy Senior Fellowship (Higher Education Academy, 2016)

Memberships

  • Higher Education Academy, Senior Fellow (2016-),
  • European Association of Social Anthropologists, Member (2000-), http://www.easaonline.org/
The data on this page was last updated at 05:00 on February 18, 2026.