Dr Nisha Kapoor wins ESRC Future Research Leaders Award

Lecturer in Sociology, Nisha Kapoor has recently been awarded an ESRC Future Research Leaders Award to look at ‘Race and Citizenship in the Context of the War on Terror’.

This will be a three-year project beginning in January 2015. The research will investigate the growing insecurity of citizenship in the context of the War on Terror with a particular focus on different forms of citizenship removal and exclusion and their racial dimensions. In the post 9/11 context the use of extradition, citizenship deprivation and charter flight deportations have been promoted, assisted in part by changes to the law, yet little is known about the full extent of these forms of removal; who it is that is being extradited, having their citizenship deprived and being deported en masse; what the conditions are in which these removals occur; and what the justifications are for their use. This research aims to address these issues.

CAPACITIE Project Newsletter

CAPACITIE Project Newsletter

Newsletter Issue 2, September 2014

Read the latest edition of the CAPACITIE Project newsletter via this link

It includes an update of what our PhD Student Rina Siyengwa has been working on in the past few months.

Landmarks and future adventures: celebrating 50 years of conversation analysis

On the 29th July, the Language and Social Interaction Research Cluster in the Department of Sociology at York held a symposium to mark the significance of 2014 in the history of conversation analysis (CA). 

It is 40 years since the publication of the highly influential paper, A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation (Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974); 30 years since the landmark publication of edited collection, Structures of Social Action(Atkinson & Heritage, 1984); and, as we were recently reminded at the world’s largest ever CA conference – held in June at the birthplace of CA (UCLA) – it is now 50 years since Sacks gave his first lecture on conversation analysis. 

Capitalising on this moment in time, we held the symposium to celebrate and reflect critically on the accomplishments, challenges, and future possibilities created by the field’s exponential growth over the last five decades. 

With invited facilitators from Europe (Dennis Day, Simeon Floyd, Trine Heinemann, Anssi Peräkylä) and the US (Galina Bolden), the event was based around semi-structured discussion sessions aimed at creating space for reflection that is often absent from our busy working lives. 

We were delighted by the creative way in which participants entered into the spirit of the day, generating exciting ideas for future collaborative working.

Laurie Hanquinet - New book published

Laurie Hanquinet new book 'Du musee aux pratiques culturelles' has just been published by the University of Brussels.

This book identifies six different ‘cultural profiles’ of visitors, each synthesizing a particular relationship to modern and contemporary art museums. A visit to an art museum can reflect a love of art, a search for new experiences, a certain classicism, an opportunity to see friends, a window on the world or an exceptional outing to see beautiful things. Moving away from clichés, this book provides a nuanced picture of the audiences of modern and contemporary art museums, while discussing current major sociological theories of cultural participation.

International Sociological Association Congress 2014

Written by Ros Williams and Alex Simpson

In July the International Sociological Association (ISA) held its 2014 Congress in the port city of Yokohama, Japan. For one week the city hosted 6,087 sociologists who came from all of over the world to contribute to this global, quadrennial sociological event. As two PhD students who had been given the opportunity by the Department of Sociology to attend, it was hard to comprehend the sheer scale of the conference. Organised into ‘research committees’ which further divide into small panels on specific themes, the innumerable papers and sessions demonstrated the span of research being undertaken by sociologists from across the globe today. 

One hundred and four countries were represented and, because of this, there was incredible international scope. Examples from the Health and Clinical Sociology research committee included papers on the recent emergence of Clinical Sociology in Iran, to the governance of Thailand’s public health system. Within the Institutional Ethnography research committee, presentations explored the various uses of ethnography to explore institutional contexts within Chile, Canada, France and the United Nations. Papers also demonstrated wide methodological variety, including the use of visual sociology to better understand the embodied experience of disability as well as how ethnography can be used to understand the nuanced contexts of rural life. This incredibly wide tapestry of research meant there were innumerate opportunities to attend papers that either directly spoke to our own research or, equally valuable, to simply follow our interests as sociologists.

On the Saturday of the conference we both had to opportunity to present from two papers from our own, ongoing doctoral research projects. Ros’ paper on collaborative governance in provision of regenerative medicine was part of a panel organised by the Sociology of Health Research Committee. As a ‘distributed paper’, a written piece was produced to circulate and present. Along with this style of paper, there were various different presentation approaches, including traditional papers and round table sessions with groups of shorter papers. Alongside this, Alex’s paper explored how ethnography can be used to better understand the normative and cultural assumptions of market life within the City of London. As part of the ‘Institutional Ethnography’ research committee, this oral presentation was able to pool together some of the themes emerging from a preliminary data analysis and to gain invaluable feedback from others engaging in a similar field.

Presenting our PhD work at a conference of this size was a thoroughly worthwhile experience. Both papers were well received and new contacts made which will hopefully lead to the opening of further opportunities and outlets for our work. Beyond our presentations, attending the ISA gave us both the crucial professional opportunity to meet other sociologists working both within and outside our areas of research. Overall it was a hugely enjoyable and worthwhile experience and our deepest thanks go to the Department whose funding and support made all of this possible.

ESA PhD Summer School held at York

The ESA PhD Summer School ‘A Sociological Imagination for the 21st Century’ took place at York University between August 27th-29th.

The Summer School was opened by Dr Wes Lin who welcomed students studying in 18 different countries to York and to a drinks reception hosted by the Sociology Department. We then enjoyed two full days of discussion of draft articles prepared by students as well as keynotes talks and a panel presentation. 

The Summer School was organised by Prof Ellen Annandale who also taught at the event alongside Prof Ricca Edmondson (National University of Ireland), Prof Robert Fine (Warwick University) and Prof Tally Katz-Gerro (University of Haifa).

Some feedback from students:

• “It was marvellous. I am assured that I am going the right way. Had the possibility to hear a critique (in a positive manner) from people who really wish to help”. 
• “Very good event – useful topics, great organisation’. 
• “Great, very nice and interesting people. "Overall I was delighted with the quality of the papers”.
•  “I can't think of any other opportunity I've had to engage with fellow researches with quite as much intensity (sociology for breakfast!), and it was nice to be able to forget for a short while about all the institutional and political issues surrounding academic work at the moment and just focus on the intellectual side”.

Nathan Manning published in Discover Sociology

The Great Meeting Place: Bradford’s City Park and Inclusive Urban Space

An article written by Ala Sirriyeh (University of Keele), Anna Barker (University of Bradford) and Nathan Manning (University of York) has been published in this month's edition of Discover Sociology.

It can be read online at http://www.discoversociety.org/2014/08/05/the-great-meeting-place-bradfords-city-park-and-inclusive-urban-space/