Rachel Thomson is a sociologist whose research interests include the study of the life course and transitions, as well as the interdisciplinary fields of gender and sexuality studies. She is a methodological innovator and is especially interested in capturing lived experience, social processes and the interplay of biographical and historical time.

Completed projects include:

Scoping Qualitative Longitudinal Research with Seldom Heard Families. Funded by the ESRC as part of the commissioning of a new birth cohort.A feasibility study for the ESRC on a possible qualitative longitudinal study of seldom heard groups linked to a new birth cohort.Thomson, Rachel; Lacey, Alison Jane; Nasrawy, May; Boddy, Janet; Morrice, Linda; Brannen, Julia (2024). Scoping Longitudinal Qualitative Studies with Seldom-Heard Families. University of Sussex. Report. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.25574778.v1

Reanimating data: experiments with people, places and archives. Funded by the ESRC's transformative Social Science scheme this project saved and shared a classic research data set (Women, Risk and AIDS project 1988-90) and used the archive as a starting point for new forms of participatory research with contemporary audiences. To explore the work visit the FAYS archive https://archives.reanimatingdata.co.uk. To find out about the methodological and theoretical contribution of the work see our blog https://reanimatingdata.co.uk/. The project involved Rachel Thomson, Sharon Webb and Rosie Gahnstrom at the University of Sussex and Niamh Moore at Edinburgh University. It worked in partnership with the community archive Feminist Webs through Alison Ronan.

Everyday childhoods: Funded by the AHRC and the ESRC we have followed panels of children and young people over time to trace everyday cultures and everyday digital childhoods using multi-media methods. The multimedia showcase can be accessed at http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/everydaychildhoods/

Making Modern Mothers: Longitudinal and intergenerational investigation into the transition to new parenthood, funded by the ESRC. See http://modernmothers.org/

Inventing Adulthoods: a landmark qualitative longitudinal study of 100 young people’s transitions to adulthood over 15 years funded by the ESRC. http://www.restore.ac.uk/inventingadulthoods/

New frontiers in qualitative longitudinal research: A methodological innovation network funded by the National Centre for Research Methods that ran between October 2012 -13, involving a series of 5 seminars and workshops and resulting in a special issue of the International Journal for Social Research Methods March 2015. For further information see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/esw/circy/research/currentresearch/newfrontiers

PhD supervision.

Rachel is an experienced doctoral supervisor and examiner and welcomes approaches from qualified applicants in her areas of research expertise.