Dr Sacha Hilhorst

Dr Sacha Hilhorst

Post Doctoral Research Fellow

Department of Sociology

Room No
OLD.3.07
Languages
Dutch, English
Key Expertise
Deindustrialisation, Political Discontent, Political Ethnography

About me

Sacha Hilhorst is an ESRC-funded post-doctoral fellow in sociology, working on the changing politics of England’s post-industrial towns. Her doctoral work was an ethnographic investigation of the shifting politics of ex-mining and manufacturing towns in the Midlands. The project found that there was a crisis of legitimacy in England’s former industrial heartlands, as many citizens have come to understand politics as fundamentally corrupt. 

Expertise Details

Political Sociology; Ethnography; Post-industrial Towns; Deindustrialisation; Legitimacy

Selected publications

Journal Articles

Hilhorst, S., Koch, I., Fransham, M., Reeves, A. & Savage, M. (forthcoming). ‘Corruption talk’ and working-class politics in 21st century BritainThe Sociological Review.

Hilhorst, S. (2024). Political legitimacy after the pits: Corruption narratives and labour power in a former coalmining town in England, British Journal of Sociology.

Research

Sacha is interested in the connections between economic shifts and political subjectivities, particularly in post-industrial settings. Broadly situated within political sociology, her work employs an ethnographic and place-based approach. She also takes an interest in the history of sociological methodologies and efforts to decolonise the discipline. 

Teaching and PhD supervision

Sacha contributes to a course on Social Scientific Analysis of Inequalities.