 This research project was part of a much larger research programme, 'Identities,' an ESRC £7million investigation into identity construction in contemporary Britain.Professor Skeggs delivered one of the inaugural lectures for the programme..

A significant methodological contribution was made by this project, which by using a multi-method approach that combined textual analysis with audience research developed the 'affective textual encounter' for studying audience responses.This method showed how class, gender and race relations are made in the research encounter when women authorise their own speech through recourse to cultural resources such as 'taste' and maternal authority (this is developed in their article on method in the 2008 European Journal of Cultural Studies and the ESRC research report).