Dr Claire Baker

Biography

Dr Claire Baker is a Lecturer in Sociology. She brings first-hand experience of agricultural communities to her research and teaching in sociologies of land use, the lived experience of globalisation, policy change and social inequalities. Her prize-winning research brings together social, economic and cultural histories to investigate the ways in which social change is lived at the micro-level. A key element of her research method is the use of a ‘plumb-line’ (following Simmel) to use the in-depth study of a particular case to elucidate broader social and cultural change. Using fine-grained and in-depth qualitative data, her work seeks to make connections between the macro and the micro and therefore moves well beyond the local scale.

Dr Baker has received both the University Medal and Chancellor’s Doctoral Research Medal for her research work and spent time as a Visiting Scholar at both Wageningen University, The Netherlands, and Cardiff University, Wales during her PhD candidature. Her professional experience includes the role of Project Manager of the $7.8M Commonwealth-funded Collaborative Research Network for Mental Health and Well-being in Rural and Regional Communities that concluded in 2016.

Qualifications

BA Hons (Class I), PhD (Sociology)

Teaching Areas

Social policy

Power and social inequality

Research methods

Media and society

Sociology of land use

Research Interests

Economic sociology

Sociology of land use

Social history

Social change

Publications

Baker, C. (forthcoming). Homeground: A Sociology of Land Use in Australia. Palgrave Macmillan.

Redden, G., Baker, C. & Phelan, S. (forthcoming). ‘Neoliberalism in Australia and New Zealand’ in Neoliberalism in Context: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by S. Dawes and M. Lenormand, Palgrave Macmillan.

Baker, C. 2018. The nation-building state retreats: An Australian case study in the changing role of the state. Journal of Rural Studies, Volume 62, pp. 146-155.