Professor Deborah Youdell

Deborah Youdell

School of Education
Honorary Professor

Contact details

Address
School of Education
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Deborah Youdell is an Honorary Professor and former Head of the School of Education. Deborah Youdell is internationally renowned for her research in education. She has been at the forefront of the new field of biosocial research in education and has led sociological study of educational inequalities, education practices and student and learner subjectivities. Since her first book investigating the connections between education policy, practice and inequality was named ‘Book of the Year’ by the UK’s Society for Education Studies (Gillborn & Youdell 2000), her work has taken the study of learner identities into the mainstream of education research.

Qualifications

  • PGCert. Education Studies (Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) (Macquarie University)
  • PhD Sociology of Education (Institute of Education)
  • MA Women and Writing (University of East Anglia)
  • BSc Applied Social Science (University of North London)

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Youdell, D & Lindley, M 2018, Biosocial education: the social and biological entanglements of learning. 1st edn, Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315226408, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315226408

Article

Sutton, J, Youdell, D & Kitching, K 2025, 'School spaces of dissensus: Protecting sexualities education in anti-gender, anti-Muslim and de-democratising times', The Curriculum Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/curj.334

Youdell, D, Lindley, M, Shapiro, K, Sun, Y & Leng, Y 2020, 'From science wars to transdisciplinarity: the inescapability of the neuroscience, biology and sociology of learning', British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 881-899. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2020.1784709

Youdell, D, Harwood, V & Lindley, M 2017, 'Biological sciences, social sciences and the languages of stress', Discourse, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 219-241. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2018.1394420

Youdell, D 2017, 'Bioscience and the sociology of education: the case for biosocial education', British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 38, no. 8, pp. 1273-1287 . https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2016.1272406

Allan, J & Youdell, D 2017, 'Ghostings, materialisations and flows in Britain’s special educational needs and disability assemblage', Discourse, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 70-82. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2015.1104853

Youdell, D 2016, 'New biological sciences, sociology and education', British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 788-800. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2016.1184406

Youdell, D & McGimpsey, I 2015, 'Assembling, disassembling and reassembling ‘youth services’ in Austerity Britain', Critical Studies in Education, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 116-130. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2015.975734

Youdell, D 2012, 'Fabricating "Pacific Islander": Pedagogies of Expropriation, Return and Resistance and Other Lessons from a "Multicultural Day"', Race Ethnicity and Education, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 141-155. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2011.569243

Youdell, D & Armstrong, F 2011, 'A politics beyond subjects: The affective choreographies and smooth spaces of schooling', Emotion, Space and Society, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 144-150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2011.01.002

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

McGimpsey, I & Youdell, D 2018, Trajectories, vectors and change: mapping late neoliberal assemblage. in EL Sweet (ed.), Disassembled Cities : Social and Spatial Strategies to Reassemble Communities. 1 edn, Global Urban Studies, Routledge, London.

Youdell, D & Lindley, M 2016, The absent body: biosocial encounters with the effects of physical activity on the wellbeing of children. in S Dagkas & L Burrows (eds), Families, young people, physcial activity and health. Routledge.

Youdell, D 2015, From policy sociology to assemblage ethnography. in K Gulson, A Metcalfe & M Clarke (eds), Post-Structural Theory and Education Policy. . Routledge, pp. 110-121.

Chapter

Bhopal, K, Preston, J & Youdell, D 2011, Intelligibility, agency and the raced–nationed–religioned subjects of education. in Intersectionality and ‘race’ in Education.

Commissioned report

Bramley, G, Green, A, Ramcharan, M, Whitehouse, M, Sutton, J, Hopkins, L & Youdell, D 2024, Evaluation of Partnerships for People and Place: Birmingham Project. WMREDI.

View all publications in research portal