Laura Smith
Graduate Teaching Fellow & Postgraduate Research Student
Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology
Biography
Laura is a feminist sociologist of inequalities, identity, intimate relationships, and everyday life, with expertise in creative qualitative methods. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), and approaching submission of her doctoral thesis.
Previously, Laura obtained a first-class BA (Hons) in Human Geography from Queen Mary University of London in 2018, receiving the Principal’s Graduation Prize in recognition of outstanding academic achievement. She then completed her MA in Social Research at the University of Leeds, graduating with a distinction in December 2019. She commenced her Graduate Teaching Fellow position in the School of Law and Social Justice in September 2022.
Laura teaches on modules across Sociology, Social Policy, and Criminology. She has an inclusive pedagogical practice supporting student learning on topics including social inequalities and intersectionality, social change, welfare, crime, and punishment. She has been on the module teams for the following modules: SOCI102 (Social Change and Social Policy in Contemporary Society), SOCI103 (Changing Inequalities), SOCI106 (Becoming a Social Researcher), SOCI108 (Controlling Crime), SOCI244 (Criminological Perspectives and their Applications), SOCI254 (Punishment, Penality and Prisons: Critical Debates) and SOCI372 (Architecture and Power: Parliaments, Prisons and Courts).
Thesis title
Love Across the Divide: Intimate Relationships in Northern Ireland
Research
Laura’s current doctoral research focuses on intimate relationships across the ethnopolitical divide in Northern Ireland, following the signing of the peace accord, known as the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement (GFA) in 1998. While Northern Ireland is in a formal state of ‘peace’, challenges remain for couples who may not fit into identity categories which shape many aspects of social life, such as schools.
Laura’s research uses creative qualitative methods to explore the ways in which women in intimate relationships across the divide (and the love they practice) contribute to peaceful relations in a post-conflict society. Existing studies examining mixed relationships in contexts such as Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Israel/Palestine often refer to the ways that couples traverse traditional boundaries through romantic relationships, and issues they are confronted with, such as family disapproval and hostility.
Laura's research extends this literature through a feminist analysis, by paying particular attention to the ways in which women's love and emotional labour are mobilised in ways that contribute to sustaining peaceful social relations. In doing so, the research engages with broader debates on emotional labour within intimate relationships and examines how cultural and gendered expectations position women as more responsible for emotional care, relationship maintenance, and conflict mediation within heterosexual partnerships.
Supervisors
Dates of study
September 2022 - September 2026
Peer-Reviewed Academic Publications
Smith, L. (Accepted and peer reviewed, forthcoming book chapter), ‘Love Across the Divide: Everyday (Non) Peace in Northern Ireland’, Palgrave Macmillan Edited Collection, part of the Gender and Sexualities in Histories series.
Public Scholarship
Smith, L. (12th November 2025), ‘Trespasses: little has changed for couples dating across the religious and political divide in Northern Ireland’, The Conversation UK, https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.uhjfrqfqq