Katie Higgins is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sheffield. Her research examines social and spatial inequalities. Research interests include families and wealth, elite cohesion, the classed, gendered and racialised processes of elite formation and qualitative research methods. Her work has been published in The Sociological Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Ethnic & Racial Studies, among other journals. She has previously contributed to radio features, blogs and podcasts, including BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed, The Conversation and LSE Inequalities.Â
As the PI of an ESRC New Investigator Grant, her current project examines business elites on a transnational stage by studying the global organisations that facilitate executive peer advisory groups. Before her current position, she was a Research Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford and an Urban Studies Foundation International Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sheffield.
She holds a PhD in Human Geography and an MSc in Social Research Methods from the University of Sussex, funded by the ESRC. She has been a visiting researcher at Queen’s University, Canada and the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
She is a co-founder and co-convenor of the BSA Sociology of Elites Study Group, co-founder and co-convenor of the Elite Studies Working Group, and book reviews editor for The British Journal of Sociology.
