Centre for Research on Families and Relationships

CRFR Directors are drawn from various schools within the University of Edinburgh, to offer academic expertise and guidance relating to our evolving themes.

Dr Emma Davidson

Director, CRFR

Emma is a Lecturer in Social Policy and Qualitative Research Methods and a co-director at the Binks Hub which champions community-led, arts-informed research. Her research interests focus on youth transitions and community studies, with particular interest in social infrastructure and inequalities. With fellow co-director Lynn, she has developed techniques to think about, handle and analyse large volumes of complex qualitative data.

Dr Jeni Harden

Director, CRFR

Jeni is a Senior Lecturer in Social Science and Health at the University of Edinburgh. She is also Director of Education for the Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics. Jeni combines her research interests in the sociological study of family health and sexual and reproductive health, with a passion for teaching.

Prof Lynn Jamieson

Director, CRFR

Lynn is Professor of Sociology, Families and Relationships and a founding co-director of CRFR. She previously served as President of the British Sociological Association. Lynn is known internationally for her research on intimacy, identity and social change. Her current research interests include the power of families and relationships to influence responses to climate change and issues of sustainability.

Dr Michelle King-Okoye

Director, CRFR

Michelle is a Lecturer at the School of Health in Social Science, University of Edinburgh. She has a strong interest in leadership, mentoring roles and marginalisation and health for ethnic minority communities. She focuses on beliefs, culture, ethnicity, traditions and practices and how these impact on wellbeing and health and illness experiences for individuals and families.

Dr Kaveri Qureshi

Director, CRFR

Kaveri is a Senior Lecturer at the Global Health Policy Unit which lies within the Social Policy subject area of the University of Edinburgh. She studies the combined effects of race/ethnicity, class and gender on health and intimate relationships, specifically chronic ill health, relationship breakdown and divorce, reproductive health and work, and COVID-19.

Dr Shruti Chaudhry

Director, CRFR

Shruti is a Chancellor’s Fellow in sociology. She is a qualitative researcher focusing on migration, families and intimate relationships, ageing and the life-course, social change and gender and intersecting inequalities. Previously, she worked in women’s studies and development studies in India. Her doctoral research, also completed at Edinburgh sociology, was an ethnographic study of marriage migration in rural north India that explored the gendering of intimacy in an arranged marriage, often violent context. More recently, her research has focused on minority ethnic ageing in the UK, more specifically the relational lives of older adults of South-Asian heritage in Scotland.