Dr Joanna Malone
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Profile

Biography

Joanna is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the department. She is undertaking an Early Career fellowship entitled ‘Living and Dying Well in Old Age: Spiritual Needs in a Non-Religious Future’, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Her work investigates how changing religious landscapes impact upon the spiritual, emotional, and pastoral needs of older adults who are non-religious and how ideas around flourishing and living and dying ‘well’ are shifting.

Joanna joined the Department of Sociology in January 2022 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate on a three-year Leverhulme Trust funded project, Becoming Citizens of ‘Post-secular’ Britain: Religion in Primary School Life, PI Anna Strhan (York), Peter Hemming (Surrey), and Sarah Neal (Sheffield). This study aimed to investigate the role of religion in the work that schools do to foster notions of citizenship and national identity, how children and their parents experience these processes, and what this means for children’s sense of belonging in wider society.

Joanna is a qualitative researcher and studied Anthropology at the University of Southampton for her undergraduate degree before completing a MSc in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Joanna was awarded her PhD (2021) from the University of Kent in the department of Religious Studies, her doctoral research explored the lived experiences of Non-Believing Older Adults in England.

Joanna previously worked as an Associate Lecturer, specialising in the Sociology of Religion, at the University of Kent, a Research Coordinator at Canterbury Christ Church University, and a Research Assistant at Anglia Ruskin University. 

Joanna was previously the Co-Deputy Editor of the NSRN Blog and a committee member in the Sociology of Religion (SocRel) BSA Study group, acting as Early Career Researcher and Postgraduate Liaison Officer.

Publications

Selected publications

Strhan, A., Malone, J., Hemming, P., and Neal, S. (2025). Affective engagements with religion and citizenship in English primary schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 1–19.

Malone, J., Strhan, A., Hemming, P. and Neal, S. (2025). Exploring Religion and Citizenship in Primary School Worlds. REtoday.

Malone, J. (2023) The importance and limitations of ‘Choice’ in child-rearing practices for non-believing older adults, Religion, DOI: 10.1080/0048721X.2023.2186960

Malone, J. & Dadswell, A., 2018. ‘The Role of Religion, Spirituality and/or Belief in Positive Ageing for Older Adults’. Geriatrics, 3(2): 28. https://doi.org/10.3390/geriatrics3020028

Hamid, E., Malone, J. and Stock, J. 2017. 'Social Lives, Social Engagement and Work'. In Docking, R. and Stock, J. (eds.) International Handbook on Positive Aging. London: Routledge, pp.193-201.