Relational wellbeing is an emergent construct grounded in the interpretivist tradition in social science. It approaches people as subjects, and aims to understand the ways they see the world in as near to their own terms as possible. This contrasts with mainstream approaches to subjective...

This paper is a lightly edited transcript of Sarah's Inaugural Professorial Lecture on April 25, 2018. It draws on primary research in Zambia but also reflects on the promotion of wellbeing in the UK. There are three main points. 1. The need to recover a key promise of the focus on wellbeing, to...