Violet Broadhead

I am an early career researcher and qualitative social scientist whose work addresses sustainability and equity in systems of production and consumption.

I hold an ESRC-funded PhD in Management from the University of Bristol, which addressed charity shops as longstanding but poorly understood sites of waste management in the UK, and key nodes within global networks of consumption, production and disposal. The thesis drew on a suite of qualitative methods to explore material, organisational, and policy influences on charity shop reuse practices, identifying barriers to sustainability and providing a novel perspective on the circular economy and its imaginaries.

I am part of an impact-focused project based at Cardiff University which fosters knowledge exchange and upskilling among researchers, policy makers and practitioners around issues in the second-hand economy.

As a research associate at the University of Bristol, I have worked on a range of subjects including contemporary housing developments as interventions into the future of the home, and household food practices in a shifting economic climate.

I favour ethnographic methods and a material-oriented approach to research.