Name: Teresa Crew 

Position: Senior Lecturer in Social Policy 

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 01248 382838     

Location: Room 222.6, Ground floor, Main Arts

Dr Teresa Crew is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy whose research focuses on social inequality, higher education and public policy. Her work examines the systemic barriers encountered by working-class individuals and other marginalised groups, challenging deficit narratives and highlighting the cultural wealth and perspectives these communities bring to academia.

Publications

Dr Crew is the author of three monographs:

• The Intersections of a Working Class Academic Identity: A Class Apart (Emerald Publishing). This ebook is open access and freely available to download thanks to funding from Knowledge Unlatched: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/93383

• Higher Education and Working-Class Academics: Precarity and Diversity in Academia (Palgrave Macmillan)

• Working-Class People in UK Higher Education: Precarities, Perspectives and Progress (Emerald Publishing, 2025), co-edited

She has also published many peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and blog articles on educational inequality, class identity and higher education policy.

Current Projects

Teresa is currently co-editing a Handbook on Class and Culture for Intellect Publishing, and a student textbook on social problems for Bloomsbury Publishing.

Awards and Recognition

In 2025, Dr Crew received the Jake Ryan and Charles Sackrey Award from the Working-Class Studies Association, recognising books by writer(s) of working-class origins that speak to issues of the working-class experience in academia.

In 2018, she won the Policy Press Outstanding Teaching Award from the Social Policy Association and was awarded a Bangor University Teaching Fellowship. In 2019, she became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

Research Expertise

Dr Crew's research extends beyond higher education to include graduate employment and regional labour markets, as well as the exclusion and discrimination experienced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. Her work typically employs qualitative methodologies including semi-structured interviews, focus groups, ethnography and autoethnography.

Education

Her PhD, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, was completed in 2014. The thesis focused on graduate inequalities in relation to class, gender and place.

Dr Crew is the conveyor of a number of modules in the School

• SXS2097 Gender Perspectives is a second year undergraduate module which discusses the historical, social and individual significance of gender.
• SXU1006. Social Divisions is a first year moduke that looks at aspects of our identity and how they influence our experiences of health, education, employment, crime and housing.
• SXP3050 & SXY4015 Tackling Inequalities 1& 2, two modules that focus on tackling social problems.

Teresa has previously taught 

• Undergraduate and Postgraduate work placement modules
• Wrote and taught HPS4003 Revolting Subjects, a postgraduate module based on Professor Imogen Tyler’s book Revolting Creatures: Social Abjection and Restistance in Neoliberal Britain
• a year one research methods module 

She has presented at conferences in relation to her teaching and research, for instance:

Crew, T. (2020). Working class academic capital.  Working Class Academics conference, 14 and 15th July 2020

Crew, T. (2019). "I can't last much longer on pittance”. A classed understanding of precarity. Precarious Work & Gender Inequality in Higher Education: Researching for Change – University College Cork, 16th May 2019.

Activities

A member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Class and Culture

Worked on a British Sociological Association task and finish group to create an Applied Sociology curriculum

Member of British Sociological Association (BSA)