Staff profile

Hester joined the Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences in 2022 following a lectureship at Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands). Prior to this, Hester completed a BSc in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, an MPhil in Gender Studies at Cambridge University and a PhD in Sociology/Sport and Exercise Sciences at Durham University. Hester has also spent time as a research fellow at overseas institutions such as the University of Adelaide and the University of British Columbia. 

Hester is a qualitative researcher, whose work exists at the intersection of health, gender, and digital media. Her current research seeks to better understand how individuals who struggle with eating disorders can engage with exercise in ways that are supportive to their mental health and wellbeing. Hester also conducts research exploring how health experiences are communicated on social media platforms. For example, by studying memes and other digital artefacts as a way of understanding peoples’ experiences of (ill)health and ‘meeting participants where they are’ by engaging with the textual/visual content they create or engage with online.  This research is often conducted using a feminist theoretical lens.

Hester's digital media work has focused on how specific populations agentically curate their social media feeds, in the context of eating disorder recovery (Hockin-Boyers et al, 2021), as an anti-racist tactic (Hockin-Boyers and Clifford-Astbury, 2021), and more recently as a method of combatting racially biased social media algorithms (publication forthcoming). This work seeks to interrogate how, in the face of neoliberal ‘light-touch’ platform regulation, individuals are required to generate their own personally relevant content regulation strategies to protect their wellbeing. 

Hester is a qualitative researcher specialising in digital methods, with additional experience with digital ethnography, longitudinal and in-depth interviews, multimodal discourse analysis, as well as creative and visual research techniques.

PhD Supervision

Hester welcomes expressions of interest from students interested in PhD study in the following areas:

• Digital culture and health
• Mental health and exercise
• Gender and sport

If you are interested in pursuing postgraduate research in any of these areas, please email Hester directly at hester.r.hockin-boyers@durham.ac.uk

Research Interests

• New Media
• Digital Methods
• Exercise and health
• Eating disorders 
• Gender

Journal Article

• Mohr, E., Jamie, K., & Hockin-Boyers, H. (online). Fatphobia as a form of gender-based violence: Fat women, public space and body belonging work. Fat Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2025.2469357
• Hockin‐Boyers, H., Jamie, K., & Pope, S. (2024). Intuitive tracking: Blending competing approaches to exercise and eating. Sociology of Health & Illness, 46(8), 1828-1848. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13821
• Roderick, M., & Hockin-Boyers, H. (2024). Towards a sportive agoraphobia of professional athletes. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 16(6), 519-533. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676x.2024.2378157
• Dumitrica, D., & Hockin-Boyers, H. (2023). Slideshow activism on Instagram: Constructing the political activist subject. Information, Communication and Society, 26(16), 3318-3336. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118x.2022.2155487
• Hockin-Boyers, H., Pope, S., & Jamie, K. (2021). Digital Pruning: Agency and Social Media Use as a Personal Political Project Among Female Weightlifters in Recovery from Eating Disorders. New Media and Society, 23(8), 2345-2366. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820926503
• Hockin-Boyers, H., & Warin, M. (2021). Women, exercise and eating disorder recovery: The normal and the pathological. Qualitative Health Research, 31(6), 1029-1042. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732321992042
• Hockin-Boyers, H., & Clifford-Astbury, C. (2021). The politics of #diversifyyourfeed in the context of Black Lives Matter. Feminist Media Studies, 21(3), 504-509. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1925727
• Hockin-Boyers, H., Jamie, K., & Pope, S. (2020). Moving Beyond the Image: Theorising 'Extreme' Female Bodies. Women's Studies International Forum, 83, Article 102416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2020.102416
• Hockin-Boyers, H., Pope, S., & Jamie, K. (2020). #gainingweightiscool: The use of transformation photos on Instagram among female weightlifters in recovery from eating disorders. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 13(1), 94-112. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676x.2020.1836511

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Hockin-Boyers, H. (2023). ‘Shy girl workouts’ aren’t just a great way to get fit – they may also help women gain confidence in the gym
• Hockin-Boyers, H., Pope, S., & Jamie, K. (2021). Can women curate their social media feed to protect mental health?
• Hockin-Boyers, H. (2018). Lifting the stigma from women and strength training. [Blog]

Other (Print)

• Hockin-Boyers, H., Pope, S., & Jamie, K. (2021). ‘Digital pruning’ helps women protect their mental health