Context rather than authority
My background in psychology has focused on how we navigate complex emotional and social environments.
I completed my PhD in 2021 and have worked closely with research students and academic staff across UK higher education across a range of roles, including active research, postgraduate education, and researcher development. Across these settings, my attention has consistently been drawn to how people make sense of experience in contexts shaped by identity, power, and collective life—particularly where those experiences are emotionally complex or not easily articulated.
Bringing this attentiveness into researcher development involved examining institutional experiences that are often taken for granted, most notably the fragile period following the PhD viva. Through interviews and evaluative research, this work highlighted both the acute need for reflective support at moments of transition and the ways in which existing structures frequently assume resilience, confidence, or self-direction without acknowledging how unevenly these are distributed across your research culture.
Because my core scholarship centers on how human beings navigate complex social and emotional worlds, I naturally see research itself not as a purely technical or procedural activity, but as a deeply social and emotional practice: something that unfolds over time and is shaped by relationships, power, belonging, and everyday life. What connects my academic work to my mentoring is this fundamental commitment to lived experience, and to what becomes possible when there is space to think things through rather than having to squeeze your experience into rigid progress metrics or bureaucratic boxes.
My multi-perspective understanding comes from working directly within formal doctoral structures as part of the supervision teams for two postgraduate researchers through to the successful completion of their degrees. Experiencing the supervisory relationship from the inside afforded me a practical, live insight into how institutional milestones, feedback loops, and project transitions are balanced and negotiated from both sides of the table.
This inside view has been enriched by distinct professional roles that offered novel insights into the wider research culture. Working within researcher development and training management—where I facilitated open conversations between researchers and supervisors and managed the national Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES)—provided a macroscopic look at the systemic pressures and shared friction points facing both students and staff. Similarly, serving as the Student Union PGR Officer during the pandemic offered a unique vantage point on how acutely isolated researchers can become when institutional frameworks are stretched—highlighting that this vulnerability is often magnified by the unique threshold of the research journey itself. Rather than an administrative list of achievements, I hold these roles as essential learning spaces that clarify the multi-layered landscape your research journey unfolds within.
A Multi-Perspective View of the Research Landscape
Selection of my academic work and research interests
Academic Work
My academic work has been shared through a mixture of peer reviewed publications, doctoral research, conference presentations, and applied research outputs.
The examples below are included to give a sense of the kinds of questions, approaches, and contexts that have shaped how I think about research and research cultures.
Peer reviewed publications
- Sullivan, G., Day, C. & Hacsek, Z. (forthcoming). “Immersive and Virtual Visual (multisensory) Qualitative Research: Towards two methods of data collection and analysis using real world 360-degree video” International Journal of Qualitative Methods.
- Day, C. (2022). “The Rainbow Connection: Disrupting background affect, overcoming barriers and emergent emotional collectives at ‘Pride in London’.” British Journal of Sociology.
- Messick, K., Aranda, B., & Day, C. (2020). “The experiences of metal fans with mental and developmental disorders in the metal music community.” Metal Music Studies.
- Day, C. & Nicholls, K. (2019). “‘They Don’t Think Like Us’: Exploring attitudes of non transgender students toward transgender people using discourse analysis.” Journal of Homosexuality.
- Sullivan, G. & Day, C. (2019). “Collective emotions in celebratory, competitive, and conflictual contexts.” Emotions: History, Culture, Society, 3, 202–222.
Doctoral research
- Day, C. (2021). Investigating the role of group based and collective emotion at social justice events. PhD thesis, Coventry University.
Conferences and knowledge exchange (selected)
- “Being stripped of the subversive.” European Conference on Politics and Gender (2024)
- “‘Remoaners’ last laugh?: Intelligent humour and group based emotion.” Festival of Psychology (2023)
- “Post viva support in UK HEIs.” UKCGE International Conference on PGR Mental Health & Wellbeing (2022)
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