Maria Xenitidou

Maria Xenitidou has undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in International Relations, Politics, Identity, Migration and Research Methods and holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield (thesis titled "National Identity and Otherness in Greek Speakers' Talk about Immigration"). Her main interests are in identity and belonging (including citizenship, migration and claims-making), intergroup relations (including prejudice and racism), sense-making, contingency measures and social innovations, context and discursive approaches. Maria was granted a Marie-Curie fellowship and a fellowship “Supporting Postdoctoral Researchers” funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) and the Greek State to study the relationship between lay and social science discourses on migration, identity and citizenship in Greece. She currently resides in CRESS, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey where she has been involved in various projects on topics such as the study of social norms, STS perspective to quality in science and ‘smart’ discourses, perceptions of and approaches to domestic energy use, and the exploration of new research methods. At the moment, she also leads British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant aiming to study everyday and institutional discourses on citizenship amidst the recent migration and refugee issue. She has published in international journals (e.g. Discourse & Society), has edited and published two special issues (e.g. Qualitative Psychology), and two edited volumes, and authored and co-authored book chapters (e.g. in The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics, Routledge). Apart from her research activity Maria Xenitidou teaches topics in micro-sociology and social psychology (e.g. intergroup relations, migration and identity, prejudice and racism), discourse analysis and research methods (mainly qualitative) at undergraduate and postgraduate levels (https://surrey.academia.edu/MariaXenitidou/CurriculumVitae).