Elena Genova
Assistant Professor in Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences
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Biography
Elena Genova joined the School of Sociology and Social Policy initially as a Teaching Associate in Sociology in September 2017 before becoming an Assistant Professor in 2020. Previously, she had completed her PhD on young Bulgarian highly skilled migrants in the UK at the same School. She has taught on wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules at the School for a number of years. Elena has also worked as a research assistant at the University of Leicester on an international collaborative project on forced migrant women (asylum seekers and refugees) and their experiences of housing and healthcare support in Leicester. She has also a very rich experience as volunteer adviser, supporting asylum seekers and refugees in Nottinghamshire with advise on housing, education and benefits. Elena has also carried out a mixed-method research project for Belong Nottingham on Barriers to Employment for African migrants and refugees in Nottingham. She also won the 2015 Best Postgraduate Research Paper, awarded by the School of Sociology and Social Policy. Elena holds BA degree in Political Science from the St Kliment Ohridski Sofia University in Bulgaria and a MA degree in Global Citizenship, Identities and Human Rights with Distinction from the University of Nottingham.
Elena is currently the Research lead for the Identities, Citizenship, Equalities and Migration Centre (ICEMiC), the School's Careers and Placements Officer and the Undergraduate Programme Convenor for Sociology.
Teaching Summary
Elena's teaching interests closely reflect and are informed by her research activity and educational background. These include: theories on late/liquid/post modernity, identities, belonging, intra-EU… read more
Research Summary
Elena is currently working with Dr Elisabetta Zontini on a project exploring the settlement experiences of EU migrants (Italians and Bulgarians) in Brexit Britain.
Elena is also part of a research team working on a project called 'Mapping Community Networks in Post-Pandemic Urban Spaces" (click for more info), which is a collaboration between UoN (Dr Alessio D'Angelo is PI, Dr Will Paterson, Saaliha Lone) and London Met (Prof Louise Ryan, Dr Beatrice de Carli, Hosn Houssami), alongside local community partners.
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1366-268X
Selected Publications
Elena's teaching interests closely reflect and are informed by her research activity and educational background. These include: theories on late/liquid/post modernity, identities, belonging, intra-EU mobility, highly skilled migration, policies and provision in relation to asylum seekers and refugees, EU citizenship, digital sociology, qualitative and quantitative methods etc.
Elena has taught for several years at the School of Sociology and Social Policy on a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate core and elective modules as a seminar tutor before joining as a full-time member of staff. She has supervised many students who successfully completed their undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations.
Current teaching (2022/3):
Course convenor:
SOCI2039 Research Design and Practice (Qualitative Methods) (Level 2, core)
SOCI2040 #Sociology: Identity, Self and Others in a Digital Age (Level 2, elective)
Seminar/workshop tutor
SOCI3001 UG Dissertation (Level 3, core, dissertation supervisor)
SOCI3007/4096 Migration and Transnationalism (Levels 3 & 4)
PhD supervision
Franka Zlatic (co-supervised with Dr Elisabetta Zontini)
Past Research
Elena has recently completed her PhD research. Her thesis Migration and the 'Children of the Transition': Unravelling the Experiences of Young Highly Skilled Bulgarians in the UK focused on both university students and young professionals. More specifically, the research centred upon three key focal points: what happens before (the participants' migratory projects), during (adjustment and reactions to othering discourses) and after (implications upon identities and sense of belonging) migration.
Elena has also researched the asylum-seeking process, paying particular attention to the gender dimension. She was looking at the experiences of asylum-seeking and refugee women of housing and healthcare support on a national, regional and local (Leicester) level.
Elena has also completed a mixed-method study on the barriers to employment that African migrants face in Nottingham, commissioned by Belong Nottingham. .
GENOVA, E., 2019. ‘Between a Rock and A Hard Place’: Bulgarian Highly Skilled Migrants’ Experiences of External and Internal Stereotypes in the Context of the European Crisis. In: SIERP, A. and KARNER, C., eds., Dividing United Europe:: From Crisis to Fragmentation? 1st. Routledge.