Rachel Lara Cohen

Rachel Lara Cohen is a Professor in Sociology, Work and Employment at City, University of London, where she joined in 2013 after prior roles at the University of Surrey, University of Warwick, and St Petersburg State University. Her research focuses on the sociology of work, particularly non-standard employment forms like self-employment, mobile work, and homeworking, with a strong emphasis on work-life boundaries, body work, and gendered labor dynamics in occupations such as hairdressing, car mechanics, and accountancy. A mixed-methods researcher, she co-edited special issues on body work and everyday self-employment and led the City Q-Step Centre to enhance data literacy in social science students.

• Established: 2022-2025 ESRC-funded project ‘L-Earning: Rethinking young women's working lives’
• Education: PhD in Sociology (UCLA), BA in Politics and Modern History (University of Manchester)

Her research spans gender disparities in student employment, feminist methodologies, and quantitative literacy. She has served as Associate Editor of Work in the Global Economy and former Editor of Radical Statistics, with leadership roles including Head of Department of Sociology (2017-2020) and Elected Senator at City. Notable awards include the British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2007-2010) and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2021).

Students supervised include topics on care sector workers, student employment in service work, ethnic identity negotiation, gender in higher education administration, and statistical studies of diversity. Her work has been published in journals such as The British Journal of Sociology, Sociology, and Gender, Work & Organization, covering themes like precarity, gendered labor patterns, and methodological innovation.