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Culture, Values and Practices
Our research explores how specific cultural forms and values are made and lived in practice.
Approaching culture critically as a lived process that is always interwoven with politics, economy, and society, our research spans different cultural worlds and scales, and addresses how people engage in difference and shape social life through cultural practices.
Our expertise encompasses a range of topics, including media, digital, and popular cultures, social and cultural theory, cultural institutions and industries, knowledge production, religion and spirituality, race and ethnicity, social class, post/decoloniality, and belonging and place.
We challenge and assess ongoing social and cultural changes, critically analysing transformations of citizenship and media, social inequalities and trends. Our research evaluates cultural participation, engagement and disengagement from local to international scales.
People
Staff
- Dr Eliran Bar-El
Social Theory, Cultural Sociology, Sociology of Intellectual Interventions - Dr Kath Bassett
Ethnographic, Qualitative and Digital Methods, ANT, Foucauldian and Posthuman feminist theories, Digital technologies, Locative media platforms and algorhythmic Governmentality, Cities, Cultural-economic development and tourism, Emotions, affect and the psy disciplines, Masculinities and transgender issues/politics - Dr Yener BayramoÄŸlu
Media practices of belonging, digital ethnography, representation, transnational cultures, counterpublics. - Professor David Beer
Popular culture, new media cultures, cultural theory, digital methods - Dr Christina Buse
Embodiment, Ageing, Dementia, Material culture and technology - Dr Emma Casey
Social and cultural history of consumption, Gambling, Sociological studies of domestic life and experiences. - Dr Sangeeta Chattoo
Global health, Genetic disorders, Reproductive technologies, Race, ethnicity and citizenship, Ethnographic and biographical methods. - Dr Jenn Chubb
Responsibility and epistemic cultures, algorithmic justice, creative industries, digital technologies, knowledge production, virtue epistemology and epistemic value. - Dr James Cummings
Gender, sexuality and identity. - Dr Peter Gardner Contentious politics (protest, revolt, revolution, civil war), postconflict societies, ethnic and racial studies, symbolic objects, environmental movements.
- Dr Patricia Hamilton
Black feminist theory, Parenting culture studies and reproduction, Intersectional politics of early parenting, Black feminist research methodologies, Assisted reproductive technologies and their intersection with race and parenting. - Dr Metin Koca
Cultural change and reproduction, Politics of difference, recognition and tolerance, Sociology of religion and non-religion, Morality, ethics and values, Ethnographic and archival methods.
- Dr Joanna Malone
Religion and non-religion, Ageing and the life-course, Inter-generational research, End of life, Citizenship and belonging. -
Dr Asha Abeyasekera
Marriage and kinship; the everyday practices of intimacy and care; and the gendered impacts of global capitalism on women’s homemaking in contemporary South Asia. The gendered dimensions of urban poverty and precarity; the materiality and emotional dimensions of intimate relations and domestic violence; and the creative strategies women use to survive, resist, and flourish even as they claim ethical lives. - Dr Haley Elizabeth McAvay Citizenship, national identity, social/political attitudes.
- Dr Gareth Millington Urban sociology, race and racism and urban culture.
- Dr Emily Nicholls
Gender and identity, Femininities, Consumption and the night time economy, Alcohol and sobriety.
- Dr Raphaël Nowak
Culture, Music consumption, Digital technologies, Materiality, Popular culture heritage
- Dr Tom O'Brien Environmental sociology, democratisation, social movements and political leadership.
- Professor Ruth Penfold-Mounce Celebrity, media, death, crime.
- Dr Amanda Rees
Social theory, Sociology of science, Popular understanding of science, History of primatology. - Dr Ayshka Sene
The history and memory of the Second World War in France and Britain, National identity and belonging in France, Oral history theory and practice. - Dr Katy Sian De/Postcolonialism, Race and Ethnicity, Culture, Identity and Diaspora.
- Dr Anna Strhan Sociology of religion, non-religion, morality ethics and values, evangelicalism, religion and parenting.
Research students
Gaming, rituals interaction with popular culture, religion, death and the undead.
- Adam Dinsmore
- Yumeng Dou
- Jade Gilbourne
- Dylan Goodacre-Hall
Online communities, death and dying, virtual spaces, digital archiving.
Community and belonging, feminist urban research, marginalisation.
Social media politics, democracy, populism culture.
Cultural Criminology, trangression studies, Queer Carnivalesque' / 'Folk' culture, Groteskology.
Political Sociology, social movements, climate crisis, future studies.
Urban sociology, spaces of female street-based sex work.
Scientific knowledge production, Knowledge dissemination, Transformation of academic work.
School architecture, Educational spaces, Educational pedagogy.
- Cath Stinton
Project spotlights
Find a full list of our research staff alongside their interests and contact details.