Department of Sociology

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 […]

By Peter G Johnson Paul Mason’s recent book ‘Post-Capitalism’ has generated a lot of debate amongst those on the left of British politics; most obviously in interminable and reassuringly repetitive Guardian debates and opinion pieces. It has also inspired an equal amount of derision from those on the right; most predictably in ‘common-sensey’ reviews from […]

By Paul Hodkinson Discussion of goths and mental health has just made a high profile return to the news, following publication of a study in Lancet Psychiatry (Bowes et al, 2015) that indicates teenagers who identify as goths are more likely to be depressed or to self-harm than those who do not. Elaborating on an […]

By Charlie Masquelier Following Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential victory, Alain Badiou published a set of reflections aimed at revealing the true meaning of this event (or, as he put it, ‘non-event’) for French society and French politics. This was followed by the publication of a book with a similar intent and written by Richard Seymour, who […]

By Rachel Brooks Introduction Historically, educational institutions have had an uneasy relationship with emotions. Following the Enlightenment tradition, schools and universities have often been concerned only with educating the mind, while side-lining the body[1]. Their focus has thus, traditionally, been on reason, rather than emotion. Boler argues that this privileging of the rational over the […]