Margaret Wetherell

Phone: +64 9 923 2933
Email: m.wetherell@auckland.ac.nz
Room: HSB 519

Office hours: Please email for appointments

I recently returned to the University of Auckland to take up a half-time post after a 30 year academic career in social psychology in the UK. I completed my undergraduate and Masters degrees at Auckland in the 1970s and was a Junior Lecturer in the Department in 1977-78. In the UK I held posts at the University of St Andrews and at the Open University. I have a continuing connection with the Open University as Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences. I am on the editorial boards of a number of journals and edit a book series, Identity Studies in the Social Sciences, for Palgrave/Macmillan. From 1999 to 2004 I was Chief Editor (with Stephen Reicher) of the British Journal of Social Psychology. From 2003 -2009, I directed the Identities and Social Action Programme for the UK Economic and Social Research Council, a £4million public investment in research on identity issues. The ISA programme consisted of 25 research projects across UK universities and brought together over 90 researchers in social psychology, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, geography, sociolinguistics, social policy and education (see www.identities.org.uk). I have published widely in social psychology and my books and articles have been translated into a number of languages including Chinese, German, Spanish, Greek, Turkish and French.

My research has focused, first, on developing discourse theory and methods for social research and, second, on the study of identity. My research grants on identity issues have centered on investigations of ethnic and national identities, citizen identities, and the social psychology of masculinities, and included work on Pakeha identities and discourse in New Zealand published in Mapping the Language of Racism (1992, Columbia University Press). My current research concerns discursive and affective practices. I am interested in patterns in people's embodied meaning-making and understanding the trajectories in their emotional responses and everyday activities. This topic is the subject of my most recent book Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding published by Sage in 2012. Other recent publications include three edited books pulling together the findings of the Identities and Social Action Programme and the development (with Chandra Talpade Mohanty in the States) of an international handbook in identity studies The Sage Handbook of Identities, published in 2010.

• Wetherell, M. (2012). Affect and emotion: A new social science understanding. London Sage.
• Wetherell, M. and Talpade Mohanty, C. (eds.) (2010). The Sage Handbook of identities. London: Sage.
• Wetherell, M. (ed.) (2009). Identity in the 21st century: New trends in changing times. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Wetherell, M. (2011) ‘Winds of Change: Some Challenges in Reconfiguring Social Psychology for the Future’. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50, 399-404.
• Wetherell, M. (2008) ‘Speaking to Power: Tony Blair, Complex Multicultures and Fragile White English Identities’. Critical Social Policy, 28 (3), 299-319.