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   Feminist companions to Psychology  Series

The Feminist Companion series is motivated by a desire to make sure that the thriving field of academia relating to feminist psychology is being made accessible to those who are new to the field (i.e. undergraduate students), thus ensuring that exciting developments receive the maximum possible coverage, as well as the best chance of shaping the thoughts of the psychology academics and practitioners of the future.

On the one hand, the forefront of feminist psychology is constantly advancing. On the other hand, it is still possible for students to complete a full undergraduate degree in Psychology without considering anything to do with the subject. This series aims to bridge that gap, providing short, snappy, pedagogically informed books that sit alongside – as well as complement, complicate, and contest – psychology textbooks and courses. They aim to engage undergraduate psychologists, ground them in a feminist analysis of our discipline’s history and show how academic work might speak to their values, their activism, or help them make sense of their experiences. This series celebrates the fun, fierce, fabulous, and wonderful things that feminism has to offer to psychology.

All titles in the series map to the British Psychological Society (BPS) curriculum as well as the Quality Assessment Agency’s (QAA) Subject Benchmark Statement for Psychology.

 

A Feminist Companion to Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology

The Feminist Companion series includes books which act as your friends and mentors in book form, supporting you in your studies, especially when things get tough. This companion offers crucial support for anyone embarking on a feminist journey through Psychology’s past and present. It offers a uniquely critical, inclusive and affirmative approach to understanding gender in Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology (CHIP). By accessibly presenting knotty and entangled topics, this book promises to ignite your curiosity and get you asking questions. 

Key features include:

  • Five Reasons Why You Need a Feminist Companion – a helpful guide to what readers can expect to gain from this book
  • Learning objectives to tell you what the chapter will cover and how it relates to what you’ve learned so far
  • Key questions to help put the theory you are learning into practice
  • Summary sections that articulate the main points of each chapter and provide a useful revision aid
  • A glossary of key terms

This book maps to the British Psychological Society (BPS) curriculum on Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology as well as the Quality Assessment Agency’s (QAA) Subject Benchmark Statement for Psychology. 

 

Winner of the 2023 BPS Book Award in the Textbook Category 

 

 

 

About the authors:

Katherine Hubbard

Katherine is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Surrey, UK. Her research and teaching are interdisciplinary, including psychological, historical and sociological components which focus on gender, sexuality and queer studies. She takes an affirmative and inclusive approach and specialises in queer feminist histories of Psychology. 

Peter Hegarty

Peter is a Professor of Psychology at the Open University, UK. He is a social psychologist and historian-psychologist who has often argued that human behaviours deemed intelligent, such as language, scientific thinking, and moral reasoning, are invidiously shaped by gender, sexuality and sex norms beyond psychologists’ awareness. 

 

A Feminist Companion to Social Psychology

This companion offers a feminist, critical, better-informed understanding of social psychology; what it knows, what it can deliver – and what it can’t. Ultimately, it will help you gain a deeper understanding of the data, analytic tools and theoretical frameworks that inform Social Psychology, as well as empowering you to develop the capacity and authority to challenge assumptions and become a critical and engaged social psychologist.

Key features include:

  • Five Reasons Why You Need a Feminist Companion – a helpful summary of what readers can expect to gain from this book
  • Activity boxes, suggesting ways you can put the theory you are learning in to practice
  • See and Hear for Yourself boxes, signposting readers to where they can find real-world examples of the concepts covered
  • Summary sections that articulate the main points of each chapter and provide a useful revision aid
  • A glossary of key terms
    This book maps to the British Psychological Society (BPS) curriculum on social psychology as well as the Quality Assessment Agency’s (QAA) Subject Benchmark Statement for Psychology.

 

Winner of the 2023 BPS Book Award in the Textbook Category 

 

 

 

About the authors:

Wendy Stainton Rogers

Wendy is Emeritus Professor at The Open University, UK, and a member of the Open University Press Editorial Advisory Board. Across her career she has written ten bestselling books, the majority of which are for Psychology students. She is renowned for her clear-sighted and accessible writing style, as well as for her innovative work in Critical Psychology.

Madeleine Pownall

Madeleine is a lecturer in Social Psychology, Research Methods, and Advanced Social Psychology at the University of Leeds, UK. She is Chair of the Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group (PsyPAG) and an Associate Editor at The Psychologist.

 

A Feminist Companion to Research Methods in Psychology

This companion offers a better-informed understanding of research methods, exploring key topics such as ethics, reproducibility, reliability and validity, and research design through a feminist lens. The ethics of research relationships are explored, alongside issues to do with prejudices and biases implicated in psychology’s treatment of women.

Ultimately, this book aims to develop your critical and analytical skills by encouraging a questioning approach to understanding how psychological knowledge is produced, and by offering alternative, feminist-informed approaches to framing research questions, adopting data collection techniques, and analysing and interpreting data.

Key features include:

  • Five Reasons Why You Need a Feminist Companion – a helpful guide to what readers can expect to gain from this book
  • Activity boxes, suggesting ways you can put the theory you are learning into practice
  • See and Hear for Yourself boxes, signposting readers to where they can find real-world examples of the concepts covered
    Summary sections that articulate the main points of each chapter and provide a useful revision aid
  • A glossary of key terms

About the authors:

Hannah Frith

Hannah is Principal Teaching Fellow at The University of Surrey, UK. Her research focuses on body image, as well as critical explorations of women’s experiences of sex and sexuality.

Rose Capdevila

Rose is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at The Open University, UK, current Chair Elect of the BPS Psychology of Women & Equalities Section (POWES), and Co-Editor of the journal Feminism & Psychology.

About the Feminist Companion Series
Series Editors: Sarah Riley, Rose Capdevila and Hannah Frith

As Series Editors we can each remember pivotal moments during our undergraduate psychology studies when we were exposed to feminist research and theorising. These moments have shaped our own identities as feminists, our approach to teaching, learning and research in psychology, and our engagements with psychology as a discipline. In this series, we bring together leaders in the field to offer current students such moments.


Curricula which fail to include feminist scholarship short changes students, it fails to expose them to important developments in psychology and fails to engage students who want to see the psychology they study reflecting what is important in their lives.


The Feminist Companions to Psychology series was born out of a desire to address these gaps. It draws on the historic strengths of Open University Press of taking complex concepts and presenting them in a clear and accessible way, a companion both for students studying psychology, and for staff who are looking to incorporate the latest feminist thinking into their existing teaching.


These short, snappy, pedagogically informed books sit alongside – as well as complement, complicate, and contest – psychology textbooks and courses. Aligning with the British Psychological Society’s curriculum areas. They aim to engage undergraduate psychologists, ground them a feminist analysis of our disciplines’ history and show how academic work might speak to their values, their activism, or help them make sense of their experiences. Feminist psychology is a diverse, multifaceted field of work creating cutting edge, energising psychology that challenges all of us to think and act in new ways. It’s important that we share it with the next generation of psychology students. This series is a celebration of the fun, fierce, fabulous and wonderful things that feminism has to offer to psychology.

Interested in Contributing?

If you are interested in learning more about any of the existing titles in this series or if you are interested in writing or contributing to one yourself please get in touch.

You can contact us here:

Beatriz Lopez - Beatriz.Lopez@mheducation.com 

Professor Rose Capdevila - rose.capdevila@open.ac.uk 

Dr Hannah Frith - h.frith@surrey.ac.uk 

Dr Sarah Riley - sarah.riley@massey.ac.nz 

Praise for the series

“This engaging, funny, but also deeply serious book captivated and delighted me! It provides the companion I would have loved to have had access to in my psychology undergraduate degree – a feminist friend to help you navigate and find your place in – or against – the (White) malestream of the discipline. Featuring scholarship and activism from around the globe, and across the decades, Madeleine Pownall and Wendy Stainton Rogers’ book pings with the vibrancy and creativity of feminist critique. With this companion, they have made feminist inspiration, analysis, and activism easily accessible to everyone studying social psychology!”

Virginia Braun, Professor of Psychology, The University of Auckland, New Zealand

“A big thank you to Madeleine Pownall and Wendy Stainton-Rogers for showcasing the impressive contributions that feminist scholars have made to the psychological study of social life. In lucid and lively prose, the Feminist Companion ushers readers through a compendium of scholarship that spans the Anglophone world and crosses into several disciplines. Beyond bare “findings,” Pownall and Stainton Rogers describe the diverse standpoints, methodological critiques and innovations, epistemological debates, activist projects, and ethical commitments of feminist psychologists. The Feminist Companion was written for undergraduate readers, but it holds much wisdom for us all.”

Jeanne Marecek, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, USA

“Extremely lively and super-smart, this Feminist Companion is indeed the friend you want to sit beside in every social psychology class. Pownall and Stainton Rogers provide a fresh, feisty, up-to-the moment feminist take on the dynamic field that is social psychology. Students will come away with practical skills and critical insights that will indelibly influence how they see this field, and indeed all of psychology.”

Alexandra Rutherford, Professor, Historical, Theoretical and Critical Studies of Psychology, York University, Canada

“This is an outstandingly accessible, persuasive and entertaining critical feminist engagement that demonstrates its politics in its pedagogy. It is both feminist psychology and feminist critique of psychology, and – as the authors, who are themselves key figures in the field – make clear, you don’t have to be feminist to read and benefit this book, because it’s what we all need to know anyway to do inclusive and social justice-oriented social science. This is essential reading for all undergraduate and applied psychology courses.”

Professor Erica Burman, University of Manchester, UK, editor of Feminists and Psychological Practice and co-author of Challenging women: psychology’s exclusions, feminist possibilities

“This book provides a wonderful, gently provocative, critical companion to the standard psychological curriculum! By centring research, the questions that are (and aren’t) asked, and how they are asked, Frith and Capdevila reveal the complex, messy, political reality that swirls behind the smoke-and-mirrors façade of scientifically neutral knowledge production in psychology. This is a book for any student who has wondered where they are in psychological research, or indeed anyone hasn’t wondered – because they are there – and hasn’t questioned who and what is being left out, and with what consequences.”

Professor Virginia Braun, School of Psychology, Waipapa Taumata Rau/The University of Auckland, NZ

 

Interested in Contributing?


If you are interested in learning more about or contributing to the series please get in touch.

You can contact us here:

Hannah Frith - h.frith@surrey.ac.uk 

Sarah Riley - s.riley@massey.ac.nz