Sarah-Jane is a sociologist of religion, specialising in gender and sexuality. After completing her PhD on clergy motherhood and Anglican clergy husbands at the University of Nottingham, she undertook various postdoctoral positions at Durham University and the University of Nottingham respectively. She worked on the large grant, Religion, Youth and Sexuality: A Multi-faith Exploration, with Professor Andrew Yip and Dr Michael Keenan. Utilising a mixed methods approach, this research focused on 18 to 25 year olds from a variety of religious backgrounds in order to understand attitudes and practices around sexuality. Numerous publications have emerged from this project, including two monographs.

More recently she has been researching religious attitudes to gender and sexuality issues in the Religion and Intimate Life project (funded by the British Sociological Association’s Sociology of Religion Study Group), and has also been funded by the British Academy to explore how abortion is understood in Catholic communities. She is also currently undertaking an analysis of the Anglican Church case study at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.