Sylvia Theresa Walby is a British sociologist, currently Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. She has an Honorary Doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for distinction in sociology. She is noted for work in the fields of the domestic violence, patriarchy, gender relations in the workplace and globalisation. Walby is coordinator of the Gender Equality Research Network International the aim of which is to develop, through research, the knowledge base to understand and reduce gender inequality. She is principal Investigator of the Lancaster node of Quing, an Integrated Project funded by the European Union under Framework 6 to investigate gender and citizenship in a multicultural context, 2006–2011, Member of the Executive Board, and Leader of the strand on Intersectionality. She is also co-organiser of an international network on Gender Globalization and Work Transformation. Walby is the first UNESCO Chair in Gender Research and coordinates the associated UNESCO Chair in Gender Research Group. She was appointed in 2008.
Career
Walby has been Sociology Professor at the University of Leeds, Professor and Head of Department of Sociology at Bristol University; Reader in Sociology and Director of the Gender Institute at the LSE; Lecturer in Sociology and Director of the Women's Studies Research Centre at Lancaster University; Visiting Associate Professor in Sociology at UCLA and Honorary Visiting Scholar at the Schlesinger Library, Harvard University. She was the first President of the European Sociological Association and has been Chair of the Women's Studies Network UK. Her current research is situated within the tension between general social theory and specific forms of inequality, especially gender. Over the years this led her from theories of patriarchy to a current concern to mainstream difference into social theory. She has an interest in economic matters, a fascination with new political forms, and concern with marginalised groups. Today, all of these issues are framed by globalisation, the understanding of which requires new forms of social theory, especially complexity theories. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 Birthday Honours. In 2017 her contribution to sociology was recognised by Queen's University Belfast who awarded her an Honorary Doctorate in Social Sciences.
Paper presented to a conference of the British Sociological Association, University of York, April 2004.
Gender, Globalization and Work Transformation
Walby is co-organiser of an international network on Gender Globalization and Work Transformation, with members in US, Japan, Germany and UK. Key interests are in the relationship between the new knowledge based economy and new non-standard employment forms in the context of changing forms of regulation and deregulation and globalisation.
