Barbara Hobson, PhD

Barbara Hobson is a professor Emerita of Sociology at Stockholm University, having held the Professor’s Chair in sociology with a specialization in gender research for over 17 years. Her research has spanned a range of areas in political sociology, including welfare regimes, citizenship, social movements, and diversity. She has coordinated several international projects, three of which became seminal books in gender research: Making Men into Fathers: Men, Masculinities and the Politics of Fatherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2002); Recognition Struggles and Social Movement: Cultural Claims, Contested Identities and Power and Agency (Cambridge University Press 2003); and Worklife Balance: The Agency & Capabilities Gap (Oxford University Press 2014). Throughout her research, she has sought to develop theories and conceptual frameworks for understanding how agency and power operate within different institutional layers of social and political life.