Anna Atkins

Parenthood, Social Capital and Career Success - a Life Course Analysis of Public Relations Professionals

Anna’s research aims to understand how working patterns after parenthood, work-based social networks and career success relate to each other. Social networks don’t just mean the online kind – Anna is most interested in the ‘real-life’ networks of current and former colleagues, managers and other people work brings us into contact with. She aims to understand patterns of career-related support or social capital and how these may shift after parenthood. She is particularly interested in how women’s post-parenthood transitions to flexible working patterns, such as part-time work or remote working, affect networks. A key aspect of this research is that it takes a life course focus - it will cover the whole working career, not just what is happening today. This helps to understand how events in the past relate to the present and how different career trajectories lead to different outcomes later in life.

Email: Afa098@student.bham.ac.uk

Supervisors: Dr Daniel Wheatley Professor Fiona Carmichael

Biography

Anna returned to study at the University of Birmingham after working in journalism and Public Relations (PR). These professions centre around cultivating personal networks and social capital. After having children, she left the journalism/PR sector and spent time working for a small charity focussed on reducing social isolation in later life, which could be described as the ‘flip side’ of social networks. When she came to the University of Birmingham to take the MA Social Research Methods, she encountered the huge body of academic research on the benefits some people get from their social networks. However, not everyone gets access to these benefits. This led to an interest in understanding the barriers to building supportive social networks in a career context, which in turn feeds into a deeper understanding of mechanisms leading to inequality.

Qualifications

  • BA Hons Applied Languages Europe (French and German), Thames Valley University, 1999
  • MA Social Research Methods, University of Birmingham, 2022

Research Interests

  • Gender and Careers
  • Social Capital
  • Social Networks
  • Life Course