Department of Sociology

Dr Emily Setty (University of Surrey) and Jonny Hunt (University of Bedfordshire) The slogan ‘Just Say No’, championed by Nancy Reagan in the 1980s and featured in UK TV series Grange Hill, aimed to curb drug use through fear-based messaging. Despite data showing its minimal impact, this same fear-based approach persists in sex education for […]

Kim Graham, Kate Burningham and Anastasia Loukianov This blog examines challenges and benefits experienced by our social enterprise partners in the transdisciplinary research project on sustainable food systems. If we want to do transdisciplinary research well, it is essential to grasp the varied experiences and perspectives of different partners, understanding both the challenges they encounter and […]

Vera Spangler Ethnography is a field-based research method that requires personal engagement. During ethnographic fieldwork, we as researchers are expected to immerse ourselves into a social context and become embedded in the world of our fieldsites – physically, intellectually, and emotionally. Ethnographic fieldwork is often portrayed as an exhilarating adventure, a journey into the heart […]

Paul Hodkinson and Matt Hall Introduction The Journeys of Hair Loss project (BA/Leverhulme) has been examining men’s experiences of pattern baldness through qualitative interviews with 34 men aged between 18 and 49. Below, we reflect on how hair loss acceptance discourses punctuated many of the men’s accounts, exploring the opportunities and challenges associated with such […]

Nathalie Weidhase Everybody talks about work. From social media trends discussing #QuietQuitting and #GirlBossing to TV that depicts different working lives and cultures such as Severance(2022 – present) and She–Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022), mediations of work are everywhere. These mediations often take on a particular gendered nature. For women, the notion of ‘having it all’ looms large. The aspirational image ofsuccessfully combining work, motherhood, and romancecontinues […]

Kate Burningham Conducting research that integrates and broadens insights and approaches from multiple perspectives is essential for tackling the complexities of system change. In the inaugural blog of our new series, Kate Burningham reflects on some practical implications of transdisciplinarity for academic work practices. What does transdisciplinary research involve in practice? What aspects of everyday […]