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Majella Kilkey

Co-Investigator, University of Sheffield

Majella holds a PhD in Social Policy from the University of York, and has worked at the University of Sheffield, in the Department of Sociological Studies, since 2011. She co-established the Migration Research Group at Sheffield in 2014, and co-directed it until 2022. In 2022, Majella became Director of the newly-established Centre for Doctoral Training in New Horizons in Borders and Bordering. 

Majella is a qualitative researcher working at the intersection of migration, family and care studies, including a focus on life-course dynamics. She researches with groups traditionally seen as ‘marginalised’ / ‘excluded’ / ‘disadvantaged’, including older people with a migrant background, young migrants and asylum seekers and migrant care workers. Her research is grounded in partnership working, and she is committed to using participatory and arts-based approaches to research lived experience with the aims of engendering inclusion, respect and esteem. Majella has a strong track record in co-producing public engagement events around challenging topics, including: “’If you want to go far, go together’: Doing inclusive research and practice with young people and migrant communities” (Migration Matters Festival, June 2021); “In Conversation: Arrivals: Making Sheffield Home” (ESRC Festival of Social Sciences, Weston Park Museum, November 2016); “Migration Stories Exhibition” (Sheffield’s Winter Garden, May 2014).

She has held, as PI / Co-I, a number of externally funded migration-related projects. Currently, these include two EU H2020-funded projects on which she is University of Sheffield PI: Empowerment through liquid integration of migrant youth in vulnerable conditions and Migration, Integration and Governance Research Centre. Majella is also PI on the project Storying Life Courses for Intersectional Inclusion: ethnicity and wellbeing across time and place, funded under the ESRC’s Inclusive Ageing Programme. Majella was Co-I on the ESRC-funded Sustainable Care Programme, within which she co-led work on developing understanding of how migration and mobility are transforming UK caring contexts. 

Selected Publications

Relevant Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

  • Lorinc, M., Kilkey, M., Ryan, L. & Tawodzera, O. (2021) ‘“You still want to go lots of places”. Exploring walking interviews in research with older migrants’, The Gerontologist, https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnab152 
  • Ryan, L., Kilkey, M., Lorinc, M. & Tawodzera, O. (2021) ‘Analysing migrants’ ageing in place as embodied practices of embedding through time: ‘Kilburn is not Kilburn any more’, Population, Space & Place, https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2420. 
  • Tagliacozzo, S., Pisacane, L. & Kilkey, M. (2020) ‘The interplay between structural and systemic vulnerability during the COVID-19 pandemic’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1857230. 
  • Kilkey, M., Piekut, A. & Ryan, L. (2020) ‘Brexit and beyond: Transforming mobility and immobility’, Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 9(1), 5-12. 
  • Kilkey, M., & Ryan, L. (2020) ‘Unsettling Events: Understanding Migrants’ Responses to Geopolitical Transformative Episodes through a Life-Course Lens’, International Migration Review, https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918320905507. 
  • Merla, L., Kilkey, M. & Baldassar, L. (2020) (Eds) ‘Introduction to Special Issue – Transnational Care: Families Confronting Borders’, Journal of Family Research, 32:3, 393-414. https://ubp.uni-bamberg.de/jfr/index.php/jfr/article/view/420
  • Merla, L., Kilkey, M. & Baldassar, L. (2020) ‘Examining transnational care circulation trajectories within immobilizing regimes of migration: Implications for proximate care’, Journal of Family Research, 32:3, 514-536. https://ubp.uni-bamberg.de/jfr/index.php/jfr/article/view/351
  • Kilkey, M. (2017) ‘Conditioning Family-life at the Intersection of Migration and Welfare: The Implications for “Brexit Families’’’, Journal of Social Policy 46: 4, 797 – 814. https://doi.org/10.1017/S004727941700037X
  • Kilkey, M. & Merla, L. (2014) ‘Situating Transnational Families’ Care-giving Arrangements: the role of institutional contexts’, Global Networks. A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 14: 2, 210-29. 
  • Kilkey, M., Lutz, H. & Palenga-Möllenbeck, E. (Eds) (2010) ‘Domestic and care work at the intersection of welfare, gender and migration regimes: European experiences’, Themed Section in Social Policy and Society, 9: 3, 379-460. 

Relevant Books

  • Kilkey, M. and Palenga-Möllenbeck, E. (eds) (2016) Family Life in an Age of Migration and Mobility: Global Perspectives through the Life Course, Palgrave Macmillan. 
  • Kilkey, M., Perrons, D. & Plomien, A. with Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ramirez, H. (2013) Gender, Migration and Domestic Work, Palgrave Macmillan.