Department of Sociology

The blog of the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey

“I Hate Sitting on the Floor Because it Hurts my Bottom and it Smells”: Children’s Discomfort in Primary School Assemblies

Dr Peter Hemming, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, 20/11/23 Children’s Voices Today is World Children’s Day, which marks the launch of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and promotes the importance of listening to children’s voices. Since the adoption of the Convention, understandings of children in British society have […]


Widening participation to sandwich courses – new report

Rachel Brooks (on behalf of the research team that includes Jill Timms, Frances Gow and Adeeba Ahmad) Today, the Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) has published our report on widening participation to sandwich courses in English universities.  Background Sandwich courses are undergraduate degree programmes that include a year-long placement in industry or part-time work-experience. Existing research has demonstrated that […]


Surrey Sociology meets the challenges of AI in policy and practice

By Christine Hine Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers simultaneously a wealth of opportunity and a significant challenge for a society wanting to handle its power responsibly. The Digital Societies research grouping of the Department of Sociology at Surrey carries out research across multiple substantive domains, to look beyond the hype, to explore the impacts of AI […]


The trials and tribulations of Relationships and Sex Education in England: What should we be teaching children and young people in schools and how should it be taught?

By Emily Setty Policy and practice pertaining to Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England has been and remains fraught. While the long-fought battle to introduce a statutory national curriculum for RSE has been won, we continue to see RSE as site within and through which the so-called ‘culture wars’ play out. In light of […]


The unanticipated benefits of the pandemic on capacity-building in qualitative tools via the CAQDAS Networking Project

By Christina Silver The CAQDAS Networking Project (CNP) was founded in 1994 by Professors Nigel Fielding and Raymond Lee in the Department of Sociology, here at the University of Surrey, and our remit is to provide impartial information, advice, training, and ongoing support in all things Computer Assisted Qualitative Data AnalysiS (CAQDAS) to research communities. Since the outset […]


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