Department of Sociology
Staff Research and Supervisory Interests
Dr. Mark Banks
Cultural economy; cultural industries and work; media culture; cultural
criminology; space and urban sociology.
Professor Tony Bennett
Cultural capital theory and cultural consumption; cultural statistics;
sociology, history and theory of museums/art galleries; actor-network-theory and
cultural analysis; cultural governance.
Mr. Peter Braham
Infant, child and adult health; well-being.
Dr. Simon Carter
Science and technology studies; health and medicine; public understanding of
science as applied to health issues.
Professor Richard Collins
Media ethics; media policy and regulation; new communication technologies;
national identity and the media (especially Canada and the European Union);
internet governance.
Dr. Francis Dodsworth
Historical sociology of government; liberalism; development of police and policing.
Dr. Umut Erel
Gender and migration, ethnicity, identities, citizenship, mothering and migration.
Ms. Jessica Evans
Psycho-social aspects of the public sphere and its governance; therapeutic culture;
emotions in public life; visual culture and photography.
Dr. Jacqui Gabb
Families; intimacy and emotions; sexuality; gender; research methods.
Professor Marie Gillespie
Ethnicity; national, transnational and religious identities; ethnography and media;
media audiences and publics; media and the politics of security.
Mr. Peter Hamilton
Social history of photography; humanism and photography;
photojournalism and documentary photography.
Ms. Sue Hemmings
Gender; sexualities; education; research methods.
Dr. David Herbert
Sociology and politics of religion; religion and ethics, human rights and civil
society; religion in East-Central Europe; Muslim minorities in Western Europe.
Dr. Andrew Hill
Visual culture; psychoanalysis; war and conflict; politics of security; research
methods.
Ms. Linda Janes
Gender and feminist cultural studies, particularly film, identity and everyday
practices.
Dr. Tim Jordan
Cultural and political consequences or effects of the Internet; social
and cultural implications of online games; cybercultures and cyberpolitics; social
movement studies.
Dr. Hugh Mackay
Technology and culture; shaping of technology by users; media transformation and
new media; ethnographies of media use.
Dr. Liz McFall
Material-cultural and historical approaches to economic and
organisational life, including consumer culture, advertising and financial services.
Dr. Karim Murji
Racialisation and ethnicisiation; migration; youth culture; policing and drug policy.
Dr. Peter Redman
Psycho-societal and psychoanalytically-informed approaches to cultural identity;
cultures of masculinity.
Dr. Elizabeth Silva
Cultural capital and social change; families/households and everyday life;
technology, class and gender relations.
Professor Kenneth Thompson
Culture, media and identities; cultural governance; ethnicity; French social theory.
Dr. Jason Toynbee
Media studies; popular music; creativity; copyright; ethnicity and cultural
production.
Dr. Vron Ware
Race and gender; national and transnational identity; communicative citizenship;
cultural diplomacy; place and identity.
Dr. Diane Watson
The sociology of work, careers and occupations; identities; organizational change
and the organizational impact of information technology.
Professor Sophie Watson
Public space and the multi-cultural practices of everyday life; religion, culture and
materiality; cities and urbanity.
Dr. Kath Woodward
Identities, especially in relation to gender and ethnicity; sociology of sport;
ethnography.
Dr. David Wright
Cultural capital; cultural policy; book industry and the literary field.
Research Centres
Staff, researchers and postgraduate students in the Department contribute to two
major research centres:
The ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC)
CRESC is a £3.7 million Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) - funded
major international Research Centre analysing socio-cultural change. It is the first
major Research Centre in Britain to develop a broad, empirically focused account
of cultural change and its economic, social and political implications. CRESC will
bring together the theoretical and methodological expertise of Open University and
University of Manchester staff in disciplines as diverse as Accounting and Finance,
Business, Census and Survey Statistics, Geography, History, Social Anthropology and
Sociology. The Research Centre is funded for five years in the first instance and
was launched in October 2004. The broad research agenda will be focused around
the following themes central to the analysis of socio-cultural change:
Theme 1: Cultural Economy
Theme 2: Transformations in Media, Culture and Economy
Theme 3: Culture, Government and Citizenship
Theme 4: Cultural Values and Politics
See: www.cresc.ac.uk
The Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG)
CCIG is a University designated Centre of Research Excellence. The Centre is an
inter-disciplinary social science research enterprise whose primary goal is to
conduct and promote research, dialogue, and debate that will contribute to a
greater understanding of the manifold connections between notions of citizenship,
processes of identity formation and practices of governance in the contemporary
world.
See http://www.open.ac.uk/ccig/index.shtml