Alicia Denby

I am an early career researcher and Lecturer in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, where I teach on intimate relationships and personal life. My area of research expertise is singlehood, contemporary intimacies and technological transformations of dating.

I have published in journals on themes related to reality dating shows, cold intimacies, and the ethics of researching online dating. Most recently, my PhD research, which was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, examined the everyday experiences of singlehood in Greater Manchester. Using a creative qualitative approach, this work critically interrogates the privileging of the couple relationship, and subsequent marginalisation of non-coupled intimacies. Through this work, I was able to draw attention to the limited diversity and nuance in wider representations of singlehood, and present a reimagination of singlehood in urban space that is attentive to single people’s experiences as contextual and relational.