New Lecturer in Criminology

Many congratulations to Jack Denham, a final year doctoral researcher here in the dept. Jack has accepted a permanent lectureship in Criminology at York St John University from September.

Jack has contributed hugely to the Sociology Department in recent years as the administrator of Centre for URBan Research (CURB) and as a seminar tutor and occasional lecturer. He has also been a lynch pin in organizing a variety of events including the Death and Culture Conference 2016. We wish him all the best in his future career.

A review of the Marginal Death Symposium December 2015

The Marginal Death Research: Doing Edgework symposium on Wed 2nd December was a dynamic and exciting day with stimulting papers and discussion.

Follow the link for a review of the day: Marginal Death

Murderabilia Data Gathering in the US

Jack has recently returned from a data gathering trip to the U.S.A at the end of the first year of his PhD. Observations and interviews were carried out over a period of two weeks in September, assisted by a grant from the ESRC overseas fieldwork fund. 

Museum observations and interviews yielded some high quality data supporting Jack’s PhD in morbid culture and the collecting of Murderabilia respectively. Many good connections were also made that are currently being followed up. This data will be complimented by a similar approach carried out in the UK in the months up until Christmas, as well as data gathered online from forums and fan-sites.

Whilst the interviews will mark the beginning of the data collection phase of Jack’s PhD, a preliminary analysis of the observations will be presented much sooner at the Museum’s Alive conference at the University of Leicester, November 2014.

Review of the York International Social Sciences Post-Graduate Conference 2014: Access and Opportunity

The annual York Social Sciences Post-Graduate Conference was held in the Innovation Centre on the University of York campus, 28th April 2014. As Prof. Ellen Annandale indicated in her opening address, the 2014 edition of the Post-Graduate conference was truly international. With universities across Europe (Poland, Finland, Netherlands and Russia) represented by their graduate researchers, as well as many UK institutions including Sheffield, Leeds, Goldsmiths, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leicester and Cambridge. In addition, the event was truly multidisciplinary with researchers in politics, sociology, history and anthropology participating. The organisers would like to extend their thanks to all those that travelled to York for the day.

The day began with a fascinating keynote from Dr. Mark Elliot entitled Big Data, Whose Data? Followed by the first panel comprising David Honeywell, Catherine Atkinson and Kathleen Bassett considering discourses on education and gender in the context of prisons, schools and correctional facilities. Our second panel, Elsa Saarikkomaki, Robert Rydzewski and Joanna Resiak, covered topics of social exclusion, private/public spaces and ethnic gentrification in Finland, Macedonia and Poland.

After lunch Nils Klowait, Sam Burgum and Mark Johnson presented papers on the politics of research practise, including issues around translation for academics in Russia, gaining access to documents in high-tech industries, and the importance of acknowledging one's epistemological and ontological framework when undertaking empirical research. Our final panel, Ingrida Kerusaukaite, Retna Hanani and Saumya Saxena, covered the political and legal status of refugees, access to universal healthcare in Indonesia, and the intersection of religious politics and cultural identities in India. This was followed our second keynote speaker, Prof. John Urry discussing his latest book: Offshoring.

The decision of best post-graduate paper was an extremely tough call, and many congratulations are in order for Saumya Saxena, who won with the final paper of the day entitled: Cultural Identities and Social Justice: the Politics of Personal Law in Post-Independence India.

Finally, the organisers would like to thank Keynote Speakers Dr. Mark Elliot and Prof. John Urry for travelling from Manchester and Lancaster to share their insights into Big Data and Offshoring respectively, as well as our twelve postgraduate panellists. We are also grateful to the York post-graduate community who worked hard to make the event a huge success. 360-odd days until the 2015 event!

Jack Denham, Will Paterson and Piotr Maron.

Jack Denham - Overseas Fieldwork Funding Success

Jack Denham (PhD student) has been awarded £1900.00 by the White Rose DTC on behalf of the AQC in order to undertake fieldwork in the USA.

The trip will start with a visit to America's biggest crime museum in Washington DC. Two days are set-aside for an ethnography of the museum and another for follow up interviews. The middle part of the trip is the longest accommodating a visit to America's biggest murderabilia convention, followed by one week set aside for interviews with contacts made at the event.

During this week, a trip to the 'Dime Museum', a popular murderabilia collection in Indianapolis, will also be made. Finally, the trip accommodates a visit to a crime museum in Hollywood boasting the largest murderabilia collection in the world over two days again. This trip has been arranged with the assistance of a gatekeeper with access to many interviewees during the week stopover in Indianapolis.

This trip will contribute a physical dimension to the networks addressed in Jack's proposal, providing valuable first-hand visual data as well as invaluable contacts in this industry. This exposure will also help with an understanding of the value of criminal culture to the consumer - data collected here will form the bulk of the research for his PhD.

Congratulations Jack!