Department of Sociology

By Jon Garland The tragic case of the murder of Angela Wrightson in Hartlepool in 2014 generated a great deal of media coverage in the spring of 2016 when the trial of those accused of killing her finally came to court. Wrightson, a 39 year-old with alcohol dependency issues, was subject to a brutal and […]

By Pete Barbrook-Johnson (né Johnson) Members of the Sociology department, alongside colleagues from across the University, have been working on the ERIE project for the past six years. One of the main outputs of the project is the development of a suite of software tools designed to help anyone and everyone make decisions and think […]

By Victoria Redclift #1 in 5 Muslims….get asked if they shower with their hijab on #1 in 5 Muslims….pray that when they open a margarine tub, there will be margarine in there and not curry #1 in 5 Muslims….look like Zayn Malik, to their mums. The Sun’s controversial headline on the 23rd November, claiming that […]

By Karen Bullock As someone who makes little use of social media – and certainly never Tweets – it is perhaps somewhat ironic that I have recently found myself doing research on the police use of social media. This stems from a wider interest in the nature of police engagement with citizens and communities. In […]

By Christine Hine As the recently appointed Chair of the University’s Ethics Committee, I have been reflecting on what we expect of the researchers who submit their protocols for ethical review and why we insist on review. As I see it, the review process is intended to help researchers to protect the human participants in […]

By Sarah Neal This two year qualitative project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which explores the friendships of 8/9 year old children, and their parents,  in  ‘super-diverse’  localities  in  London, England came to the end of its ‘live’ period this summer. While the data collection and analysis phase of the project is […]