Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Dr Maxine Woolhouse
Senior Lecturer
Maxine is a feminist and critical social psychologist. Her research interests are in the area of gender, social class, eating practices and critical perspectives on 'obesity'.
Maxine is a Senior Lecturer in psychology and teaches across a range of undergraduate modules including Critical and Philosophical Issues, Qualitative Research Methods and Psychology of Women. She is particularly interested in feminist and critical approaches to understanding relations between gender, social class and eating practices.
Maxine completed her PhD in 2012 which was a discourse analytic study of mothers' and daughters' talk around food, eating and body management practices. Her research aims to challenge dominant psychological understandings of eating disorders by drawing attention to the ways in which culturally sanctioned discourses around food (e.g. healthy eating; dietary restraint etc.) may be implicated in the problematic relationship many girls and women have with food and body management practices.
Maxine is currently conducting narrative research on women’s life stories of dieting, weight loss and weight gain.
Current Teaching
Research Interests
Maxine is currently conducting narrative research on women’s life stories of dieting, weight loss and weight gain. This work aims to challenge and make visible the normative and everyday assumptions about the expectations placed on women to engage in body management practices such as weight monitoring and dietary restraint.
Maxine also supervises PhD students on topics related to gender, class and eating practices. She is currently Director of Studies for Oluwatoyin Bewaji whose thesis is entitled “Classed Femininities of Black Women: Subjectivities and Agency in Body reshaping and Body Management Practices”.
Ask Me About
- Feminism
- Gender
- Psychology
