Latest news

Jellied eels and 'disgust'

Wed 29 May, 2013
BBC Radio 4
From 4pm

Drawing on a series of ethnographic encounters collected while hanging around at a seafood stand in east London, Alex Rhys Taylor explores the relationship between individual expressions of distaste and the production of class, ethnic and generational forms of distinction, with Laurie Taylor on BBC Radio 4 'Thinking Allowed'.

Fully funded PhD studentship in the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London, on the topic of ‘Prosperity Theology’.

A full ESRC funded studentship is available for 3 years for a PhD on the topic of 'prosperity theology' and the relationship between materiality and immateriality. The studentship provides a stipend of £13,726 p.a. plus tuition fees at the UK/EU rate for up to three years (full-time only). Due to funding restrictions, this studentship is open to UK and EU applicants only.

The studentship is part of a larger ESRC Professorial Fellowship awarded to Beverley Skeggs to study 'A Sociology of Value and Values'. Supervision will be provided Professor Skeggs (Sociology) and Professor Adam Dinham (Professor of Faith & Public Policy and  Director of the Faiths and Civil Society Unit at Goldsmiths). The starting date is 1 September 2013 and funding is for 3 years. The PhD must be completed by 31 August 2016.

Applications are invited from students of sociology, religious studies and anthropology who have an understanding of social theory and experience of empirical research and analysis. Candidates are asked to submit a 2 page proposal on how they would design and carry out, including the analysis and key sources they would use for a PhD on prosperity theology in London.

Applicants will have a good first degree in a relevant social science discipline. An MSC/MA postgraduate degree in a related field is also highly desirable. Applicants should have excellent oral and written presentation skills, experience with qualitative research methods and ability to meet deadlines.
 Research training will be provided by the ESRC DTC (Goldsmiths/Queen Mary).

A proposal and a CV must be submitted by Friday 21st June to b.skeggs@gold.ac.uk. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an interview, to take place soon after the closing date for applications.

From non-humans to issues: felicities of digital culture

Tuesday 28 May, 2013
Universitat Giessen
4.30-6pm

Part of 'the re/turn of the nonhuman in the study of culture: concepts – concerns – challenges'

Noortje Marres will give the closing keynote of the conference.

More HERE

Sonic Boom – 100 Years of Urban Sound

Friday 24 May, 2013
Amsterdm Museum
1.30-5pm

Part of 'How Do Cities Sound?' - A symposium organized around the installation ‘The Sound of Amsterdam’, now on show at the Amsterdam Museum

The twentieth century city comprised a cascade of intertwined social, political, technological and economic revolutions, all of which combined to radically alter the sonic sensorium that filled the century’s cities. Automobiles, radios, planes, argot, sirens, industry. All of these displaced, or drowned out, the audible sensorium of millennia before. The great revolutions of the century are also reflected in the sensibilities through which urbanites made sense of the new urban symphonies and cacophonies. Starting with the hypnotic buzz of London as heard from afar, zooming in to the cacophonous soundscapes of the street, the talk will trace the provenance of both the soundscape of modern city, and the meanings we gave to it.

More HERE

Inventive Enactments of the Social: Transmissions and entanglements

Thursday 13 June, 2013
NAB 326
5-7pm

The event is supported by Intel’s User Experience Group and studio INCITE, Sociology Department

This event brings together speakers whose work focuses on digital technologies as a way of translating research findings in inventive ways. The presentations address how the ubiquity of digital technologies may transform not only the subject matter of research, but also greatly expand the possibilities of communicating and circulating findings to and with new audiences. The event will look beyond conventional ‘knowledge transfer’ to open up ideas of other forms of transmission and entanglement with bodies, technologies and public spaces.

The Place of the Mobile: Mobile media’s stories of emplaced methods and other cartographies
Larissa Hjorth is Associate Professor and co-director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC) in the School of Media & Communication, RMIT University, Australia.

Inviting and Being invited
Kristina Lindström and Åsa Ståhl are artists and researchers who collaboratively explore making as public engagement in issues of living with technologies at the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden.

Respondent
Nina Wakeford (Sociology, Goldsmiths) is co-editor (with Celia Lury) of ‘Inventive Methods: The happening of the social’, Routledge, 2012.

Organised by Kat Jungnickel (Research Fellow, Goldsmiths) as part of the project Transmissions & Entanglements

The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media

Thursday 30 May, 2013
NAB LG02
5.30-7.00pm

Jose van Dijck, University of Amsterdam

In this invited public lecture, Jose Van Dijck, one of the world’s leading authorities on digital memory practices and social media, will talk on topics from her new book The Culture of Connectivity published by Oxford University Press in March 2013. Jose Van Dijck is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at University of Amsterdam; her previous books include Mediated Memories in a Digital Age (Stanford University Press 2007)and The Transparent Body (University of Washington Press 2005).

Respondents: Noortje Marres, CSISP, Goldsmiths, and Richard MacDonald, Storycircle Project, Goldsmiths

Chaired by Professor Nick Couldry, Media and Communications, Goldsmiths

The lecture is open to all, and will be followed by a drinks reception.

Digging Up the Urban Periphery: Reflections from Beijing on Migration, Ethnicity and Cities

Wednesday 29 May, 2013
The University of Manchester
6-7.30pm

Part of the Methods@Manchester - Symposium and public lecture: The future of the multi-ethnic city

Drawing on recent fieldwork in Beijing this lecture takes a close look at dynamic co-productions of social inequalities, ethnicity, migration and urban surface. Beijing is both unique and speaks to other cities’ precarities and uncertainties. Thus it provides a lens onto a set of issues demanding further reflection. Beijing is a rapidly expanding megacity in which the generation of wealth has drawn internal and foreign migrants to its new opportunities. With 20 million inhabitants it is a vast experiment in urban life in which the practicalities of everyday exceed urban planning as neighbourhoods are torn down and replaced.

In this lecture Caroline Knowles will explore the routes and urban navigational skills of two incommensurable groups of migrants who are ethnicised in complicated ways: poor internal migrants in Xiao Jihare and wealthier UK migrants living in a sequestered space in the gated community of ‘Capital retreat’, both urban fringe locations. Professor Knowles will suggest that navigational skills reveal migrants’ relationships with cities. Unpacking specific versions of Chineseness and white Britishness she will suggest that intimacy and distance, protection and exposure provide ways of thinking more systematically about the connections migrants make with cities. Although this material captures only a tiny capsule of urban life Professor Knowles will conclude by suggesting that it raises important questions for the ways in which we think about cities, ethnicity and migration in the context of looming crises.

Cockles & Mussels @Late

Saturday 18 May, 2013
Museum of London, Docklands
7-9.30pm

Advance Booking Only

From oysters and scallops to roll-mops and jellied eels – join urban sociologist Dr Alex Rhys-Taylor for a mouthwatering journey through the history of British seafood. Plus pop-up fish restaurants and contributions from the Billingsgate Seafood School and Tubby Issacs. With live music curated by Mercury prize nominated artist Sam Lee and the Nest Collective.

Feminism and Intimacy in Cold, Neoliberal Times

21 June, 2013
NAB LG02
Annual Gender Event
Departments of Media & Communications and Sociology

Chaired by Angela McRobbie, Sara Ahmed, Beverley Skeggs, and Sarah Kember.

This event will bring prominent feminist researchers and two visual artists together to discuss key dynamics within the field of feminist and queer intimacy studies. We will consider, among other things, the possibility of a cultural politics of love, queer resistances in the 'trans' forming of clinical and therapeutic practice, class relations in changing worlds of intimacy, the politics of care and compassion, the market for 'self-esteem', mother love, family 'human capital', and modes of countering the 'insurgent patriarchy' of contemporary neoliberalism.

We welcome scholars from the US who are able to speak at Goldsmiths, in connection with the Annual ICA event.

Architectures of Affect: Place, Politics and the Cultures of Mourning in Latin America

6-8 June, 2013
University of Zurich, Switzerland

Vikki Bell will be speaking as part of the International Symposium.

Affect, trauma and Transmission of Memory in Post-Dictatorship Argentina (Culture Memory Seminar)

Saturday 18 May, 2013
School of Advanced Studies, UoL
11am-4pm

Vikki Bell will be speaking along with Jordana Blejmar and Cecilia Sosaas part of a one day seminar held by the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies.

Oh Wicked Flesh!

Wednesday 8 May, 2013
South London Gallery
7pm
£5/£3 Concs

WE PROPOSE that BECAUSE we want to mobilise within the intimate PUBLIC sphere, our recruitment needs to be more "minor" than the generation of fandom: it needs to recruit friends and potential allies through everyday affects. WE REMIND YOU OF THE SENTIMENTIALITY of the love letter.'

Excerpt from WE MUST LISTEN TO THIS BEFORE CONTINUING, a text by Nina Wakeford from the publication Oh wicked flesh!

An evening of readings and discussion celebrating the launch of Oh wicked flesh!, a publication which explores conditions of the contemporary human body. Oh wicked flesh! features contributions from Hannah Black, Susan Conte, Sam Keogh, Laura Morrison, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Eoghan Ryan, Linda Stupart and Nina Wakeford.

Booking is essential. Book online or call 020 7703 6120

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed: Great British Class Survey

Wednesday 1 May, 2013
BBC Radio 4
4pm

Bev Skeggs will be speaking with other academics about their reactions to the recent research.

More details HERE

SASS Seminar Series - Living with the H Index?

Wednesday 1 May, 2013
University of Durham
3.30-6.00pm

Roger Burrows will be speaking at School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Durham.

More details HERE

PhD Workshop with Les Back

Wednesday 12 June, 2013
Aalborg University, Denmark
10am-7.00pm

Les Back will be giving two lectures and participate in a PhD-session at Aalborg University. 

His two lectures will be “The Terms of Inclusions: Culture, Politics and ‘Community Cohesion" and “Bourdieu as a photographer”.

More details HERE

Public Lecture - Remembering Diana: Cultural Memory and the ReInvention of Authority

Tuesday 14 May, 2013
RHB Small Cinema
6.15-8.00pm

Vic Seidler talks about his recent book; Remembering Diana: Cultural Memory and the ReInvention of Authority

Do you remember when Princess Diana died? Memories allow us to recognise how the past echoes in the present, highlighting a tension between the media's attempts to shape cultural memories and produce narratives, and the embodied memories people carry which sense a different reality.

Part of the Goldsmiths Graduate Festival

Oakley Symposium

Friday 17 May, 2013
University of Cambrige

Registration is now open for a one-day colloquium sponsored by the Department of Sociology at Cambridge revisiting the formative feminist text, Sex, Gender and Society by Ann Oakley.

Bev Skeggs (Goldsmiths), Jackie Scott (Cambridge), Marilyn Strathern (Cambridge), Sara Ahmed (Goldsmiths) and Ann Oakley (IOE, University of London) are confirmed speakers for this event, which will be chaired by Sarah Franklin and is intended to celebrate and re-engage the history of twentieth century feminist thought. In preparation, participants are asked to reread this formative feminist text.

Places are limited and pre-registration is required online HERE
 
Please contact enquiries@sociology.cam.ac.uk for any additional assistance.

Sociology of Value and Values

Bev Skeggs has been awarded an ESRC professorial fellowship for 3yrs from Sept 2013 to study 'a sociology of value and values'. It brings with it a one year post doc on digital media and a phd on prosperity theology. She will continue to supervise her PhD students during the fellowship.

'The Sounds of Stillness: ‘Quiet’ Dwelling in/on the Visual Archive of Diaspora'

Thursday, 9 May, 2013
RHB 144
1630-1800

Professor Tina Campt (Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Director of the Africana Studies Program, Barnard College, New York)

This paper engages three innovative conceptual frameworks for theorizing diasporic formation that depart from traditional emphasis on mobility, resistance and expressiveness as primary idioms of black culture. It elaborates the concepts of quiet, stasis, and fugitivity, and uses them to consider what they tell us about what we overlook, overhear, erase or leave unremarked in diasporic formations. Vernacular photography offers an important and frequently overlooked window into practices of diasporic dwelling and fugitivity, when we attend differently to the quiet practices of stasis through which they image fugitivity. Reading these three keywords together through the photography of a Black German family offers a provisional glimpse into the possibilities of theorizing some of the fugitive practices often rendered unvisible in other diasporic frames.

The event is hosted by the Unit for Global Justice, Department of Sociology

Live Sociology vs Dead Sociology: A conversation with Professor Les Back

Friday, 3 May, 2013
Dept of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin
1530-1730 (Texas time)

Les Back will be taking part in a virtual visit to the Sociology Department, in Austin, Texas.  Les will give an introduction to "Live Methods' before embarking on a Q&A.

Media, Culture and Racism: The Legacy of Stephen Lawrence 20 years On

Saturday, 27 April, 2013
Centre for Media, Culture Research, London South Bank University
1000-1730

The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 attracted intense media attention and public debate.  The findings of the 1999 Macpherson Inquiry into the flawed police investigation of the case have had far-reaching implications for the way that racism is understood in the UK, prompting an apparent shift from ‘institutional racism’ to official anti-racism.  More broadly, the case has touched many aspects of social-political and cultural life, providing a frame of reference for changes in law, policing, race relations, education and the arts.  Yet despite the official recognition of the role that ‘institutional racism’ played in the murder investigation, there have been moves to undermine some of the changes and progress made. In 2004, for example, Michael Howard stated that the requirement of the police to keep a record of every stop was an example of ‘political correctness gone mad’. By 2009 the Labour government had reduced the amount of information that the police needed to record. Other recommendations from the Inquiry are yet to be fully implemented.

This symposium seeks to bring together academics, journalists, arts and cultural practitioners practitioners, teachers, and policymakers to explore the enduring legacy of the Stephen Lawrence case, and to promote interdisciplinary dialogue about its impact, 20 years on; at a time when racism is bubbling up in areas of British life, from politics to music to football, the issues raised by the case, and its wider resonance in public and cultural life, need to be revisited.

Confirmed speakers:

• Mrs Doreen Lawrence
• Dr Richard Stone (Panel member for the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry)
• Brian Richardson (Criminal barrister and editor of Tell it Like it is - How our Schools Fail Black Children)
• Professor Les Back (Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths University of London)
• Professor Simon Cottle (Media and Communication, Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies)
• Rehana Minhas (Former Director of Education, Equality and Entitlement, launching the Stephen Lawrence Education Standard in Leeds)
  
  For more details and to register, please see HERE

Goldsmiths Conversations

Thursday, 23 May, 2013
NAB LG02
0930-1730

This ‘Goldsmiths in Conversation’ day is an opportunity for some cross-departmental conversations by those who have been inspired, indebted or provoked by the enormously influential work of Professor Judith Butler.  The day will consist of short interventions from the Departments of Sociology, Media & Communications, English & Comparative Literature, Anthropology and the Department of Visual Cultures’ Centre for Research Architecture.  Professor Judith Butler will not be speaking, but will be present to provide a ‘Response to the day’.

The event is funded by the Unit for Global Justice (Sociology).

The event is free but registration is required.  If you would like to attend please send your name to: sociology@gold.ac.uk

Sociology in Public

A workshop with Les Back
Wed, 24 April 2013
2pm
University of York

Almost ten years on from Michael Burawoy's spirited 2004 American Sociological Association Presidential address the issue of sociology's relationship to the public has become a key issue.  In the workshop we will explore how to think of public sociology both as a practice and a principle.  Also, we will explore what it means to do sociology differently at the level of form, authorship and in relation to time.  

Participants are asked to be bring one example of how their research experience or through their reading of how doing sociology makes contact with a public beyond the university.

Studentship Competition

The Department of Sociology is pleased to announce a one-year, fees-only studentship competition for Home/EU applicants to our MPhil/PhD programmes who are aiming to start in September 2013.
 
The studentship will cover one year’s fees and is open to Home/EU applicants only.
 
The selection process will be based on: the quality of the applicant; the quality of the research proposal; the fit between the research proposal and supervisor; the fit between the research proposal and existing areas of research strength in the Department.
 
Applicants who wish to be considered for this studentship should indicate this clearly in their personal statement as part of the normal application process. There is no separate application process for the studentship.
 
All Home/EU applicants who have already been offered a place on either of our doctoral programmes as of April 22nd 2013 will be automatically entered into the competition.
 
The deadline for the studentship will be July 19th 2013 and applicants will be notified by the end of July 2013 as to whether they have been successful.

Childhoods, Real and Imagined - Priscilla Alderson

Book Launch
Mon, 20 May 2013
5pm
Elvin Hall, Institute of Education (IOE), Bedford Way, London WC1

Before the launch, there will be a seminar and discussion 3.00-5.00 p.m. about the book and its practical relevance to childhood research.  Speakers at the launch and the seminar will include Professor Roy Bhaskar (IOE) the series editor, Alan Jarvis of Routledge, Dr Mary Stiasny IOE Pro-Director, Professor Alan Norrie University of Warwick, Professor David Oswell Goldsmiths University of London, Pat Gordon-Smith IOE doctoral student, and the author herself.

Childhood researchers use a wide range of theories and methods. Childhoods, Real and Imaginedreviews connections and contradictions between the different approaches and ways to combine them. 
 
This new book sets out twelve basic ideas in critical realism and shows how these can increase our research understanding of children’s real bodies and their interpersonal relations within social structures. Children’s inner being and early morality are also examined. 

If you wish to attend please email: ssruadmin@ioe.ac.uk

Noortje Marres Interviewed

Mark Carrigan interviews Noortje Marres, convenor of the MA/MSc Digital Sociology, discussing what this emerging field is about, its methods, its promise and challenges.

Please click HERE


Another interview follows with Noortje Marres, convenor of the MA/MSc Digital Sociology, [again] by Mark Carrigan, discussing this Master's Programme, how it came about, the aims of the course, and its students.

Please click HERE

Slave to the Algorithm: Launch Event for Mute Vol 3 #4

Saturday 13 April, 2013
Unit 73a, Regent Studios, Andrews Road, London E8 4QN

Alberto Toscano will be participating in Slave to the Algorithm: Launch Event for Mute Vol 3 #4, Saturday April 13th, 2013. A night of talks, noise and music investigating the abstract power of algorithms and celebrating the launch of Mute Vol 3 #4
 
7pm – A discussion with Bogdan Dragos (finance and philosophy of technology researcher), Jonathan Kemp (builder of DIY material processing labs and environments), Alberto Toscano (author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea) and Inigo Wilkins (transdisciplinary noise researcher) – moderated by Mute editors Josephine Berry Slater and Anthony Iles
 
9pm – An evening of algo-driven noise and music curated by electronic noise artist Ryan Jordan

With:
Claude Heiland-Allen
Glich Lich
Jonathan Kemp
Mykola Haleta & Ryan Jordan
(Suggested donation £5)

info@metamute.org
www.metamute.org
http://nnnnn.org.uk

Cooking Worlds, Eating Research

Friday 19 April, 2013
6.30pm, Studio
ARTSCIENCE
University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria

If we are what we eat and if what we eat is thoroughly shaped by industry, legislation, tradition, everyday cooking practice and kitchen technologies, how can we analyse and incubate these processes? Can we find methods that would allow us not to jump immediately to a discourse analysis of laws and the food industry or the history of recipes, but take food seriously, as a form that is problematic precisely because it enters our bodies? And what would the right level of intervention be for a research programme that is interested in the whole chain of translation, from law and regulation through human bodies into the sewage system?

Michael Guggenheim will present three small experiments with which he attempted to develop a research repertoire to research food with food. The first experiment was a cooked comment to a conference on emotions and food. The second experiment was a picnic derived from research tactics, and the third experiment was an attempt to cook gentrification.

Fluid Uncertainty: Prospects of Urban Water

Tuesday 30 April, 2013
1400-1900

Michael Guggenheim will be one of the speakers at this workshop - hosted at LSE Cities - that expands beyond conventional discussions of water, infrastructure, and cities in order to address the broader cultural and political questions raised by attempts to anticipate and prepare for future hydrological events (e.g., flood, drought, contamination, runoff) across a range of urban locations.

For more details and to register please click HERE

Remembering Diana

Was to air on April 10, but has been postponed due to the death of Margaret Thatcher.

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed

Remembering Princess Diana - Professor of Sociology, Victor Seidler, talks to Laurie Taylor about the cultural impact of Diana's death. In his latest book, he argues that a new multicultural and intimate citizenship took shape as ordinary people took to the streets and rejected the usual conventions of royal funerals. Urban spaces became spaces of grief and emotions and feelings were seen as credible sources of knowledge. He's joined by the writer, Beatrix Campbell, who has also explored the legacy of Princess Diana's death.

Discourse Power Resistance 13

April 9-11, 2013
Greenwich University

Power can be a wonderful thing, as Terry Eagleton told the DPR conference in 2008: wonderful and essential for the achievement of our best and most generous purposes. But it can also be abused.

A widespread abuse of power is to organise the social world into groups that are included and others that are excluded, using the discourse of the powerful group, like subtly barbed wire, to distinguish the insiders from the outsiders on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, age, wealth, sexuality, class and other grouping. Communities may then disintegrate. The excluded members may seek to be admitted to the privileged group by learning and adopting its discourse; or they may resist this assimilation and celebrate their difference in defiant counter-cultures of their own.

What is the scope of research, learning and teaching in this contested space? What knowledges and methodologies should be included or excluded, and why? These are the issues the conference will consider.

As part of the Conference, Bev Skeggs will be giving a keynote entitled "Reacting to Reality TV: discourse, performance, value"

For more details on the conference, click HERE

Governing Algorithms: A conference on computation, automation, and control

May 16-17, 2013
New York University

Algorithms are increasingly invoked as powerful entities that control, govern, sort, regulate, and shape everything from financial trades to news media. Nevertheless, the nature and implications of such orderings are far from clear. What exactly is it that algorithms “govern”? What is the role attributed to “algorithms” in these arguments? Can we turn the “problem of algorithms” into an object of productive inquiry?

The conference sets out to explore the recent rise of algorithms as an object of interest in scholarship, policy, and practice beyond computer science. Taking a fresh view on the current wave of interest in this topic, we aim to discuss themes such as:

* the very idea of “algorithms” as a subject and object of analysis
* issues of methodology and the kind of knowledge claims that come with algorithms
* the rhetoric of problems and solutions, success and failure
* questions of agency, accountability, and automation
* secrecy, obscurity, inscrutability
* rules, regulations, resistance

Speakers include: Lucas Introna, Tarleton Gillespie, Evgeny Morozov, Daniel Neyland, Frank Pasquale, Claudia Perlich, Robert Tarjan as well as Mike Annany, Kate Crawford, Lisa Gitelman, Moritz Hardt, Matthew Jones, Karrie Karahalios, and Martha Poon.

All welcome, but registration is required: http://governingalgorithms.org/registration/

Catastrophic Urbanism

Tues, 28 May
London School of Economics & Political Science

Joe Deville will be speaking at the Catastrophic Urbanism workshop, on disaster, emergency and the city, along with Peter Adey, Ben Anderson, Claudio Aradau, Monika Büsscher and Kevin Grove.

For further details click HERE

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Engaging Tactics Stream @ the BSA Conference

Weds 3rd April,
Grand Connaught Rooms, 61-65 Great Queen Street, London, WC2B 5DA

Organised by Phd students from the Sociology Dept at Goldsmiths (supported by The Methods Lab)

The venue for the 2013 BSA conference is the grandly mysterious Connaught Rooms, owned by the Freemasons, complete with masonic stars on door handles and secret entrances into the Masonic Lodge next door. ‘Off-the-records,’ in adjacent rooms and (almost) concealed interventions to the conference, Engaging Tactics therefore showcases a sound performance and video screenings that search for ways to talk about and engage with those bodies and lives that keep or are kept away from public.

Building on the conference organised last year by Sociology PhD students on Engaging Tactics, this year they are intervening in the BSA Conference, by running a series of talks, screenings and activities on Engaging Tactics.

For further details click HERE
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Beyond gentrification: the middle classes and the city

Roger Burrows, will be presenting a paper co-written with Caroline Knowles, Mike Savage, Rowland Atkinson, Richard Webber and Tim Butler, entitled: Mapping the 'Alpha Territory': The Geodemographics of the 'Super Rich' in London.

This paper extends recent work on the 'spatialization of class' to an analysis of the territories of the 'super-rich'. This includes the now massive literature on gentrification, suburban life and middle-class identities, but also questions of domestic fortification and the spatial and political secession of the very wealthy.

More details HERE

Location: Down Town Los Angeles
Event Date: Apr 11, 2013
Organisation: Association of American Geographers Annual Conference

"When I close my Eyes"

As part of the BSA 2013 Annual Conference, Alex Rhys-Taylor, along with Les Back and Karla Berrens will make up the "When I close my Eyes" panel:

"This panel is composed of five urban researchers and invites all participants to question the hegemonic visual insight into the world both from an epistemological and ontological perspective.  It will present a different mode of attending to urban space,   exploring the changes in our perception and understanding of space that occurs when we close our eyes. From smell, to sound, to written text, to looking through photographic lenses with a different insight, this panel will present a series of short papers by three researchers’ whose consideration of the urban sensorium provides new avenues for Sociological methods."

Time: 3 PM to 5 PM
Location: Connaught Rooms, London
Event Date: Apr 5, 2013
Organisation: British Sociological Association [BSA]

The Sensuous Materiality of Multiculture

Alex Rhys-Taylor will be part of a panel on superdiversity and urban multiculture: practices and spaces of social mixing and polarisation.

"This paper draws on extensive ethnography of street markets in East London to reveal the role of under theorised aspects of urban space (in particular its smell) in the production of new urban ethnicities and the sustenance of everyday multi culture. Drawing on the methods developed as part of a recent sensory turn in the social sciences, along side an array of insights derived from anthropologies of the Caribbean, this paper aims to move beyond simplistic discussions of assimilation, acculturation and integration, and intends to reveal the role of the sensoria and sensibilities that suffuse urban space in the transcultural production of everyday multiculture."

Location: Down Town Los Angeles
Event Date: Apr 13, 2013
Organisation: Association of American Geographers Annual Conference

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Every Minute of Every Day

Every minute of every day is a collaborative experiment in real-time ethnography between Goldsmiths Sociology and Richard House Children’s Hospice (Newham) and St Joseph’s Hospice (Hackney).

The work is being coordinated by Yasmin Gunaratnam and Les Back, and will provide an opportunity for our postgraduate students to practice ethnographic methods and will also provide the hospices with some insights into the lives of their local communities.

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Inaugural: Living by numbers? Metrics, Algorithms and the Sociology of Everyday Life

Professor Roger Burrows - Department of Sociology

The lecture will examine the sociological implications of digital data deluges in two different contexts that may be of interest to the likely audience: city life and academic labour.

A Q&A will follow with Martin Ince and Danny Dorling.

Martin Ince is principal of Martin Ince Communications. He is a freelance science writer, media adviser and media trainer. Martin founded the Times Higher/QS World University Rankings in 2004 and was their editor until 2008. http://www.martinince.eu/

Danny Dorling is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. He is also a visiting Professor at University of Canterbury NZ, in the School of Social and Community Medicine of the University of Bristol and in the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2005 he started the Internet-based Worldmapper which now has about 700 world maps and spreadsheets of international statistics. http://www.dannydorling.org/

Part of the Made in Goldsmiths Series

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Sociology UG Awards 2012-13

The Sociology Department is pleased to announce four forthcoming awards:

Goldsmiths Sociology Award for Outstanding Academic Work 2012/13. This award is for an essay or exam answer of exceptional quality in the first, second and third years.

C. Wright Mills Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement in Sociology 2012/2013. This award is for the best sociology degree result in the final year.

The awards are sponsored by Routledge.

Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online reference. They publish hundreds of journals and thousands of new books each year, from offices all over the world. The current Routledge publishing program encompasses the liveliest texts, and the best in research, with over 35,000 books in print. Routledge publishes across a wide array of subjects and disciplines, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences.

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New Pro-Warden Appointments

Pat Loughrey, Warden of Goldsmiths, has announced the appointment of two new Pro-Wardens.  Professor Mark d’Inverno (Computing) and Professor Roger Burrows (Sociology).

Mark d’Inverno will lead in research and enterprise whilst Roger Burrows will be responsible for interdisciplinary development. Both Mark and Roger will work in senior management alongside their existing research commitments.

Congratulations from the Sociology Department.

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