Death and Culture Comes to York

The Death and Culture Conference is next week (1st-3rd Sept).

The badges are made, the programme is being printed and the conference meals have been chosen and ordered.

Its still not too late to register if you want to come.

2 year Postdoc in Department of Sociology

There is a 2-year postdoc post available in the Sociology Department that is being advertised HERE

The closing date is April 12th. 

Please note this is not a post to work with an individual member of staff, but to devise a program of work associated with one or more of our research clusters. 

Informal enquires can be made to Dave Beer (chair of the appointment panel): david.beer@york.ac.uk

Death and Culture Conference - Book your place

The Death and Culture Conference 1st-3rd Sept 2016 website now has a page where you can book your place.

We have four exciting keynotes: Prof Jacque Lynn Foltyn (Sociologist), Prof Sarah Tarlow (Archeology), Dr Michelle Aaron (Film Studies) and Prof Eva Reimers (Communication Studies)

Please follow the link for more information: www.york.ac.uk/death-and-culture

4th Key Note Confirmed for Death and Culture Conference

Eva Reimers has confirmed that she will be our 4th key note speaker at the Death and Culture Conference in Sept 2016 here in York.

Eva does exciting work on communicative perspectives on death, loss, bereavement and grief and has studied Swedish media representations of disaster and death.

For more information see our website: Death and Culture Conference 

Death and Culture Conference 1st-3rd Sept 2016

Ruth Penfold-Mounce (Sociology) along with Jack Denham (Sociology), Julie Rugg (Social Policy) and Ben Poore (TFTV) are running a three day international conference at York on 'Death and Culture'

Call for Papers:
How can we, as academics, understand cultural responses to mortality?

Is every response to death – over time and over place - uniquely personal or essentially the same?

This conference focusses on the impact of mortality on culture, and the ways in which the very fact of death has shaped human behaviour, evidenced through thought, action, production and expression. The conference seeks to re-engage with the study of mortality as an academic enterprise, supported by evidence and framed by theoretical engagement. No discipline is excluded and we are encouraging researchers including postgraduates to contribute who might not consider themselves death scholars, with work that overlaps with death and the dead.

We welcome contributions on topics such as but not limited to:

·         Death, film and television

·         Fame and death

·         Historical death

·         The dead in place and space

·         Law, death and the dead

·         Art and death

        Commonplace death

Confirmed keynotes include Prof Jacque Lynn Foltyn (National University, California), Prof Sarah Tarlow (University of Leicester) and Dr Michelle Aaron (University of Birmingham)

For more details visit: york.ac.uk/death-and-culture

Please note more information will be added soon regarding conference details.

Laurie Hanquinet and Cultural Capital

Laurie Hanquinet recently sat on a panel discussing new forms of cultural capital.

Follow the link to watch her.

Presenting Conversation Analysis in LA

Merran delivering her presentation

Merran Toerien was delighted to get a chance to visit the University of California at Los Angeles last week - not only because they have sunshine, palm trees and blue sky in LA (just as the clocks were going back in York!) but because it was a fabulous opportunity to work with scholars who have pioneered the application of conversation analysis to the study of medical interaction.  

Merran was invited to give presentations to CLIC (Center for Language, Interaction and Culture - see:http://clic.ss.ucla.edu/) and the CA Working Group (CAWG).  She also met for one-to-one discussions with 8 dynamic graduate students, participated in the CAWG weekly data session, and worked intensively with Professors John Heritage and Tanya Stivers on a collaborative study of treatment recommendations.  

She is immensely grateful for this opportunity and would like to thank Professors Elinor Ochs and Tanya Stivers for the invitation, Clara Bergen for all her hard work in organising the week's activities (ably assisted also by Alex Tate), and the large number of people at UCLA who made the week both intellectually rewarding and lots of fun.   

Symposium: Fiction and the Social Imaginary

As part of the Culture Cluster, Dave Beer and Gareth Millington are running a symposium in March and are putting out a call for abstracts.

Book Launch - Handbook of Sociology of Arts and Culture

On Wednesday 7th October Laurie Hanquinet's new Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Arts and Culture whcih she co-edited with Mike Savage is having a book launch


The launch will take place from 6.30 to 8pm at the London School of Economice in CLM 6.02

Laurie Hanquinet and Mike Savage will introduce the Handbook, and there will be a response by Tony Bennett (University of Western Sydney). Several of the contributors to the book will also be present and will contribute to the discussion."

New Handbook of Sociology of Arts and Culture

Laurie Hanquinet is delighted to announce that her new book the Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Arts and Culture (co-edited by Mike Savage) will come out at the end of the month. 
She worked for three years on this project and is very happy to see all her hard work turned into this fantastic book including captivating contributions of key authors in the field. 

The book offers a comprehensive overview of sociology of art and culture, focusing especially – though not exclusively – on the visual arts, literature, music, and digital culture.

The Politics of Data in Discover Society

The new issue of Discover Society magazine focuses on the 'Politics of Data'. Dave Beer has an article in the issue on 'The growing power of the data analytics industry'. You can read the article here - Discover Society

And here is the opening paragraph:

Following the England cricket team’s recent elimination from the world cup, Peter Moores, the England coach, caused something of a stir by suggesting that ‘we shall have to look at the data’. The response in the media was one of consternation – as was the public response based on the 953 comments that the Guardian article alone has already received. Both Moores’ statement and the media response reveal something of the politics of data. Moores’ desire to return to the numbers is suggestive of how embedded and routine data analytics already are in the production and consumption of culture. Data are seen to provide the objective means by which people can be judged or pushed to compete in lots of different ways.

Dave Beer Interview - Figure/Ground on his Punk Sociology book

David Beer is senior lecturer in Sociology and his research is mainly in the fields of culture and media in the everyday context, social and cultural theory, and methods and empiricism in social and cultural research. 


He has recently been interviewed by Figure/Ground about his Punk Sociology book. They also discussed academia and disciplines.


The full interview is available online at http://figureground.org/interview-with-dr-david-beer/