Céline Benoit

Contact

• workRoom B31 Law and Social Sciences
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• Celine.Benoit@nottingham.ac.uk

Biography

Céline's area of expertise lies in the sociologies of childhood and youth, exploring the intersectionality between education, religion, and health & wellbeing. Her work seeks to capture and amplify the voices of children and young people (CYP) in contexts where they often face marginalisation and exclusion from public debates and policy-making.

Céline is an engaged scholar and is currently seconded one day a week with the Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHC), working on collaborative projects with VCFSE (voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise) organisations to tackle health inequalities among under-resourced communities in Birmingham and the Black Country. Their collaborative work has received nominations for several awards, including the HSJ Award in 2023 and the Community Inspiration Award in 2024.

Céline is passionate about using innovative research methods to work with CYP; these include arts-based methods, narrative-based methods and play-based methods. In 2023 Céline became a LEGO® Serious Play facilitator.

Céline currently teaches on the following modules: "Research Design and Practice (Qualitative Methods)", "Social Science Uncovered II", and "Investigating Social Worlds". She is a Senior Fellow of the HEA (Higher Education Authority). Her teaching tends to be informed by her research, and modules taught prior to joining the University of Nottingham include "Education for the 21st Century", "Religion and Society", "Critical Debates in Society and Policy", "Minoritised Groups & Representations", and "Business Government & Society".

Prior to joining the University of Nottingham, Céline worked at Aston University for just over 14 years where she taught Sociology and Policy and also held senior management positions such as Associate Dean for Public Engagement, Associate Dean International, and Programme Director (UG).

Research Summary

Céline's research seeks to foreground the voices and of children and young people (CYP) in contexts where they often face marginalisation and exclusion, providing a nuanced understanding of their… read more

FUNDING Funding - Children & Young People, Health and Wellbeing:

• Mar. 2024: Awarded £149,642.95 (academic partner) by NIHR England (Programme Development Grant) "Research Better Together" (PI: Dr Christine Burt, NHS; Co-I: Sophie Wilson, BVSC).
• Sept. 2023: Awarded £5420 (PI) by Research England (Policy Support Funding) "Working with children and young people to tackle health inequalities and influence policymakers" (Co-I: Dr Alexis Paton, Aston University).
• July 2023: Awarded £1,920 (PI) by ESRC (Impact Accelerator Account, Festival of Social Sciences) "Working together to tackle health inequalities in Birmingham".
• March 2023: Awarded £109,000 (Co-I, 0.5FTE) by Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHC) "REACH OUT" - a project to co-design training package for community researchers, based on the "Community Connexions' Engagement Handbook" (Benoit as main author) (PI: Dr Christine Burt, BCHC; other Co-Is: Dr Suzanne Cleary, Sophie Wilson, Dr Matthew Brooks, Florence Okwu)
• Nov 2022: Awarded £11,000 (PI) (£5,500 by Research England (Policy Support Funding) match-funded by Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust) "Understanding Barriers to Healthy and Sustainable Communities" (Co-I: Dr Alexis Paton, Aston University).
• Dec. 2021: Awarded £9422 (PI) (£6311 by Research England Policy Support Funding + £3111 by Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust) to host a "community sandpit event" to present data to community partners and co-design solutions to tackle health inequalities (Co-I: Dr Alexis Paton).

Funding - Children & Young People, Religion, and RSHE (Relationships, Health and Sex Education)

• Nov. 2022: Awarded £4,852 (Co-I) by Research England (Policy Support Funding), "Sex Education and School Protests: Understanding the Causes and Consequences for RSHE Policy" (PI: Dr Sarah-Jane Page).
• Feb. 2022: Awarded £18,833 (Co-I) by Research England, "Young Muslims' Voices and Attitudes towards Relationships and Sex Education" (PI: Dr Sarah-Jane Page, Aston University; Co-I: Dr Fida Sanjakdar, Monash University, Australia).

Funding - Children & Young People, Education, and Religion:

• April 2025: Awarded £7470 (PI) by AHRC IAA, entitled "Foregrounding 'Personal Worldviews' in Religious Education Through Art: A co-produced approach", in partnership with primary school teachers and Culham St Gabriel's Trust.
• Feb. 2024: Awarded £23,528 (PI) by ESRC (Social Science Innovation Award), to support innovative pedagogical changes in compulsory education, and co-design new teacher training packages for Religious Education in schools, , in partnership with primary and secondary school teachers, and Culham St Gabriel's Trust.
• May 2022: Awarded £29,522 (Co-I) by Culham St Gabriel's Trust to investigate teachers' attitudes towards the concept of 'worldview' and how it is used in the Religious Education classroom (PI: Dr Tim Hutchings, University of Nottingham)
• May 2020: Awarded £8000 (PI) by the Religious Education Council for England and Wales to conduct research on 'worldview' in the curriculum (Co-Is: Dr Tim Hutchings, University of Nottingham, and Dr Rachael Shillitoe, University of Birmingham)

Funding - Young People and Higher Education

• Oct. 2023: Awarded £3800 (PI), Aston University L&T Funding, "Emotional Literacy and Wellbeing among Students at Aston University" (Co-I: Aurélia Robert, Aston University)
• July 2022: Awarded £5,944 (PI), Aston University L&T Funding, "Foregrounding the Lived Experiences of Students from Low Socio-Economic Backgrounds" (Co-I: Aurélia Robert, Aston University)

Selected conferences (intl. conferences in bold):

• Benoit, C. & Paton, A., "Understanding the role of 'bricolage' among 'under-resourced and superdiverse' communities in tackling healthcare inequalities", The International Conference on Integrated Care (ICIC25), 15 May 2025, Lisbon, Portugal.
• Paton, A. & Benoit, C. "Barriers Encountered in the Underserved Wards of East and West Birmingham", MedSoc Annual Conference, 11 Sept. 2024, Warwick, UK.
• Benoit, C. & Robert, A. "Foregrounding the lived experiences of students from low socio-economic background to promote socially inclusive environments in HE", BERA Annual Conference, 9 Sept. 2024, Manchester, UK.
• Benoit, C. & Page, S.J. "Curriculum Change, Political Contestation and Religious Identity: Understanding the Relationships and Sex Education Protests in England", Nordic Conference for the Sociology of Religion, 14 Aug. 2024, Aarhus, Denmark.
• Paton, A. & Benoit, C. "Barriers Encountered in the Underserved Wards of East and West Birmingham", HSR UK 9 July 2024, Oxford, UK.
• Paton, A. & Benoit, C. "Barriers Encountered in the Underserved Wards of East and West Birmingham", 20th Biennial ESHMS Conference: Intersectionality & Inclusion in Health,11 Sept. 2025, Warwick, UK.
• Benoit, C. & Hutchings, T. "Religion and Worldviews in the Classroom: Foregrounding Teachers' Voices", AULRE Annual Conference, 20 June 2025, Birmingham, UK.
• Zakia, F., Benoit, C., Ackom-Mensah, H., & Burt, C., "Community Connexions: A Collaboration Between NHS, Academia & Local Communities to Tackle Health Inequalities by Improving Engagement in Underserved Populations," Annual Conference of the Research & Development Forum, 12-14 May 2024, Newport, UK.
• Benoit, C. & Robert, A., "Foregrounding the Lived Experiences of Students from Low Socio-economic Background to Promote Socially Inclusive Environments in HE," Advance HE EDI Conference, 6-7 March 2024, Liverpool, UK.
• Sanjakdar, F., Benoit, C., & Page, S.J. "Understanding Sexuality Education and Religion: A UK-Australia Comparison," BERA Annual Conference, 12-14 Sept 2023, Birmingham, UK.
• Page, S. & Benoit, C., "Young Muslims and the 2019 Relationships and Sexuality Education Birmingham Schools' Protests: Missing Voices from the Debate," Socrel Annual Conference, 5-7 July 2023, Bristol, UK.
• Benoit, C. & Hutchings, T., "Power in the Classroom: Making Sense of RE," Socrel Annual Conference, 5-7 July 2023, Bristol, UK.
• Benoit, C., "Working with Community Partners to Tackle Health Inequalities," UKI PRME Annual Conference, 27-28 June 2023, Birmingham, UK.
• Hutchings, T. & Benoit, C., "Who Studies Religion? Towards a Better Conversation Between TRS and RE," AULRE Annual Conference, 18-19 May 2023, Birmingham, UK.
• Sanjakdar, F., Page, S.J., Benoit, C. (in absentia). "Religion and Relationships and sexuality education: A responsive resurgence", ANU Religion in Modern Education: Conflict, Policy, and Practice, 13-15 April 2023, Canberra, Australia.

Current Research

Céline's research seeks to foreground the voices and of children and young people (CYP) in contexts where they often face marginalisation and exclusion, providing a nuanced understanding of their lived experiences and the societal structures that influence them. Her work explores the ways in which CYP encounter and navigate various educational contexts, examining issues such as agency, identity formation, and religion in schools.

Her areas of expertise lie in the sociologies of childhood and youth, focusing on the intersectionality between education, and religion. Her PhD thesis focused on how CYP encounter religion within public-funded community primary schools, revealing complexities often overlooked in current sociological literature. Céline is now working on a collaborative project, with fellow academics, primary and secondary school teachers, and other practitioners to co-create a series of training packages to support teachers who teach Religious Education (RE). The training packages are building on a new pedagogical approach in RE - the 'Religion and Worldviews' approach, on which Céline has (co)authored a number of papers.

Céline's interest in religion and education extends to understanding how CYP engage with Relationships and Sex Education (RSE), especially in the context of Birmingham where parental protests occurred outside of primary schools in 2019. While at the time the media and scholars focused on what parents were protesting against, little attention was paid to CYP, whose voices were sorely missing. With colleagues, Céline worked on two pilot projects to capture the voices of young Muslims.

Recently, Céline also started paying attention to health inequalities among CYP people, investigating how these disparities manifest and the factors that contribute to them, especially within educational settings. This builds on a number of collaborative projects with the NHS and VCFSEs (voluntary, community, faith, and social enterprise) who teamed up to work with community groups who are under-resourced, with the aim to capture voices that are traditionally missing in research: this includes CYP from refugees and asylum seekers, CYP with learning difficulties, CYP who live in highly deprived wards, CYP from racially or ethnically minoritised backgrounds. Her work demonstrates that CYP are capable of proposing solutions for policy-making purposes, but are too often caught up in unequal power dynamics.

Céline's expertise is not only theoretical but also applied, as she actively collaborates with various stakeholders, including educational institutions, healthcare providers, and VCFSEs, to translate research findings into practical interventions and policy recommendations.