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Dr Emma Taylor

Dr Emma Taylor

Visiting Fellow

International Inequalities Institute

Languages
English
Key Expertise
Sociology of Education, Sociology of Elites, Qualitative Research

About me

Emma Taylor is a Lecturer in Education at King’s College London. She joined King’s from ½ûÂþÌìÌà where she held the position of teaching fellow on ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ’s flagship interdisciplinary course for all undergraduate students, ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ100. She was a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholar in the department of Sociology at the ½ûÂþÌìÌà and she has a particular interest in the reproduction of inequalities through the education system. Her PhD research sought to investigate the micro-practices of elite formation within an independent boys’ school setting in England. Based on in-depth, long-term ethnographic analysis, the research provides a unique insider’s perspective on the conditions that enable and scaffold the formation of elite dispositions among students. Thus, the work uses innovative qualitative methods, such as peer facilitated research, to address key questions relating to the acquisition of such dispositions and how these may have the potential to be converted into powerful symbolic capital, professional success and the consequent perpetuation of the conditions that enable privilege. The work is under advanced contract to be published as a book with Princeton University Press.

Expertise Details

Sociology of Education; Inclusive and Interdisciplinary Pedagogy; Sociology of Elites; Gender; Class; Qualitative Research Methodologies; Peer Research

Recent Publications

  • Trevisan, F., Vaughan, M. & Vromen, A. (2025). Story Tech: Power, Storytelling, and Social Change Advocacy. University of Michigan Press. 
  • Vaughan, M. & Schieferdecker, D. (2025), 'Seeing a New Type of Economic Inequality Discourse: Inequality as Spectacle in the “Billionaire Space Race”', International Journal of Communication, 19 (1), 348-369 
  • Vaughan, M., & Kerr, S. (2025). Visual representations of wealth inequality in political communication. Visual Communication.
  • Vaughan, M., Gruber, J. B., & Langer, A. I. (2025). The tension between connective action and platformisation: Disconnected action in the GameStop short squeeze. New Media & Society, 27(2), 632-654.