Ellie Lee, PhD is a Reader in Social Policy at the University of Kent. Her research and teaching draws on sociological concepts such as risk consciousness and medicalisation to analyse the evolution of family policy and health policy. Her work explores why everyday issues – for example how women feel after abortion, what they eat, drink and feel when pregnant, or how mothers feed their babies - turn into major preoccupations for policy makers and become heated topics of wider public debate. She is the author of Abortion, Motherhood and Mental Health: Medicalizing Reproduction in the United States and Great Britain (Aldine Transaction) and co-author of Parenting Culture Studies (Palgrave). Her research papers include ‘Constructing abortion as a social problem: ‘sex selection’ and the British abortion debate’ (Feminism and Psychology), ‘Why do women present late for abortion’ (Best Practice and Research in Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology), ‘Young women, pregnancy and abortion in Britain: a discussion of law ‘in practice’’ (International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family) and ‘Tensions in the Regulation of Abortion in Britain’ (Journal of Law and Society).

She has a long-standing interest in debates about and provision of abortion counselling and wrote ‘Pregnancy counselling in Britain: a review of the literature’ (available at http://www.prochoiceforum.org.uk/psy_ocr13.php) in response to efforts to strip abortion providers of their place as providers of counselling.

She is the Director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies based in SSPSSR (https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/) and regularly discusses her research in the media and other public forums.