About

Imogen Tyler is a Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, a Fellow and Trustee of the Academy of Social Sciences. She is internationally renowned for her contributions to Social Theory and the Sociology of Inequalities, and has developed a range of theoretical and conceptual tools – from “social abjection” to “stigma machines” and “stigma politics” – to enrich understanding of the root causes of contemporary social problems.

In 2026–27 Imogen is CORE Professorial Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. She is Vice-President (President-Elect) of the British Sociological Association (2026–27) and will be BSA President in 2027–28. She is also an elected Council Member of the Academy of Social Sciences (2023–29).

Imogen’s published research has been widely adopted on university curricula across the world and is highly cited; she has been included in every edition of the Stanford–Elsevier list of the world’s top 2% most-cited scientists since it began in 2020. Over the course of her career, Imogen has given 50+ Keynote and Public Lectures. She has received many awards and recognitions, including a Lancaster University Award for Outstanding Contribution to Research in Social Inequalities (2014) and a Philip Leverhulme Prize (2015). 

Current research: Elemental Inequalities

In 2026–27 Imogen is CORE Professorial Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, where she is beginning a new research project, Elemental Inequalities. The project rethinks the socioenvironmental crisis of late capitalism through historic and contemporary class struggles for clean water, breathable air, food and land. Read more about the project.

Publications related to this new research project include ‘A Licence to Kill: Necroeconomic Suffocation by Stealth and the Fight for Life’ (with Beverley Skeggs, Antipode, 2026; read the blog post) and ‘Enclosures and the Making of Modern Britain’ in The Modern World After Colonialism: Remaking the Social Sciences (Bristol University Press, 2026).

Books

Imogen’s books include: Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain (2013, shortlisted for the 2014 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize); Protesting Citizenship: Migrant Activisms (2014, ed. with K. Marciniak); Immigrant Protest: Politics, Aesthetics, and Everyday Dissent (2014, ed. with Katarzyna Marciniak), The Sociology of Stigma (2018, edited with T. Slater); and a graphic essay with artist Charlotte Bailey, From Stigma Power to Black Power (2018). Imogen’s most recent book, Stigma: the Machinery of Inequality (2020), was described as “a devastating and brilliant book that reconceptualises stigma for the 21^st Century”; “By giving voice to the dehumanised, Tyler’s book powerfully bears witness to the suffering and tragedy unfolding in our age.” You can read the introductory chapter here. In 2021 Stigma was published in paperback, and was also a Left Book Club book of the month.

Public sociology and engagement

A passionate believer in public sociology, Imogen has engaged and collaborated with multiple civil society, think tank, charitable, community, and heritage organisations and groups. She was a Civic Commissioner on the Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission (2018-23), was an elected Trustee (2019-23) of the Poverty Truth Network, and a member of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Stigma and Poverty Design Team, and a consultant to JRF’s Stigma Free Futures work (2022-24). 

Imogen is an executive board member of Lancaster Black History Group. Her recent work with Lancaster Museums Service on the 18th century Black Lancastrians project, (funded by Art Fund, Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage and Association for Independent Museums), was the runner up for the 2023 Independent Museums Association Decolonizing Award & was featured as a GEM/Art-Fund re-imagining engagement case study.