About

About Professor Imogen Tyler

Writer, Teacher, Community Activist

Imogen Tyler is a Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a writer and a social activist. Imogen’s research focuses on social inequalities of poverty, class, race, gender, disability and citizenship, and how people protest, revolt against and resist social injustice. She 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. 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); Protesting Citizenship: Migrant Activisms (2013, ed. with K. Marciniak); Immigrant Protest: Politics, Aesthetics, and Everyday Dissent (2014, ed. with Katarzyna Marciniak), The Sociology of Stigma (2019, edited with T. Slater); and a graphic essay with artist Charlotte Bailey, From Stigma Power to Black Power (2019). 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.

Imogen frequently collaborates with community groups, activists, artists, heritage organisations and museums. She was a Civic Commissioner on the Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission (2017-19), is currently a Trustee of the Poverty Truth Network, an executive board member of Lancaster Black History Group, and a member of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Stigma and Poverty Design Team.

Get in touch

You can find Imogen’s contact details on her Lancaster University profile or get in touch via social media.