Current Students

We have over a hundred registered PhD students in the Department of Sociology. Here are just a handful of them:

Sandra Abegglen - s.abegglen@gold.ac.uk

The primary aim of my PhD is to advance knowledge and understanding of photographs, especially family photographs, as a mode and medium for the construction of self through time, but also to explore the potential of still images as a research tool in social sciences. My blog is at: http://everydayclick.blogspot.com/

Lucia Ariza - l.ariza@gold.ac.uk

My research explores the work of expert practices (in particular, biology, medicine and psychology) enacting gamete (ova and sperm) and embryo exchange during assisted reproduction cycles in Argentina. The research focuses on three areas of problematisation (Kinship, Value and Ethics) to understand gamete and embryo exchange in a peripheral economy.

Clovis Bergère - c.bergere@gold.ac.uk

My research interests are in emergent urban forms, youth cultures and inventive methods for urban research. My work explores the spontaneous uses of urban space and spans across London, UK, where I research the free party and squatters' movements and Guinea, West Africa, where I am interested in the urban corners and quarters where young people meet and gather, in their own terms. My interest in urban life and research also draws on my experience working as a local government manager, and community actor, most notably in children's play and sports development in London.

Liam Berriman - l.berriman@gold.ac.uk

My research on the co-constitution of young people’s virtual space focuses on the ways in which virtual spaces for children and young people have emerged as a space in which media use and engagement is constantly negotiated between users and producers. This research seeks to address the growing value placed on a ‘negotiatory’ relationship between media users and producers through examining the processes of developing virtual and online media spaces for young people. Thus the study seeks to understand how young people’s virtual spaces emerge as a product of interactions, shaped and transformed by negotiation between different groups of actors, but also how virtual space has been situated as the primary means by which the ‘user-producer’ relationship is itself mediated.

Diego Campos - sop01dc@gold.ac.uk

My project consists of a visual ethnography on the everyday life of the second generation of Chilean exiles in London. Drawing upon perspectives from migration and diaspora studies, this project aims to explore how this community understands and defines its identity in a specific spatial context, and the way in which this self-definition process has been subject to change throughout the last decade and a half. My objective is to combine still photography and a written account in order to provide a visual and theoretical narrative on exile –but also on documentary as method, practice and discourse.

Jonathan Crinion - sop01jc@gold.ac.uk

My research is on perceptions of the environment in the UK, specifically considering whether visual heuristic interventions are able to modify perceptions of nature.

Steve Curd - so802sc@gold.ac.uk

My doctoral research focuses on the ways in which notions of the healthy and unhealthy brain emerge from the many different practices, knowledges and objects that constitute functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a hospital setting, and how these are then acted upon during the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders.  As such, I am seeking to explore the ontological, epistemological and ethical ramifications of the practice of fMRI by developing an ethnographic account that is attentive to the ways that its agency may be distributed across a range of both human and nonhuman elements.

Gustavo Dias - sop01gd@gold.ac.uk

My research seeks to develop a framework to study the elaboration of Brazilian identity abroad. More specifically, it focuses on how young Brazilian migrant workers adapt their customs and beliefs to identify themselves as Brazilian through their everyday activities in London. In order to understand their transnational social networks and the elaboration of their anthropological places (Auge, 2005), this research follows the path of a migrant group who moves from Carmo do Paranaíba – MG to London.

Katharina Eist -  k.eist@gold.ac.uk  

I look at the social and psychological effects of fragmented family and collective memory on three generations of Germans, who migrated from the former Soviet Union to Germany. I focus on the third generation, which I study with attention to the effect of their families' histories on them. I work with in-depth interviews, photographs, documents and letters. My aim is also to collect oral histories of survivors of the deportation of 1941 from German settlements in the Soviet Union. 

Lidia Maria Salgado Gouveia - sop01lg@gold.ac.uk

My research project is about the search for work in Tete province. It is a case study of youth migration to Maputo, in regard to questions about knowledge and power in Mozambique. The purpose of this research is to explore the factors, causes and consequences affecting young people from Tete, especially in the matter of work where the province has been a large attraction to the many companies looking for natural resources.


Steve Hanson - sop01sh@gold.ac.uk

My research focuses on a northwestern 'market town' in order to re-think the subject of community studies for the post-industrial, globalized England of 2012. As fieldwork develops, the research is perhaps inevitably re-focusing on public discourses about localism, local politics and production, the state, supermarketization, 'austerity' and the 'big society', class, racism, gender and gentrification.

Mohamed Aden Hassan - m.a.hassan@gold.ac.uk

My research concerns transnational active citizens and the experiences of one-and-half and second generation Somalis in London: The thesis focuses on a puzzle specific to one-and-half and second generation Somali youth in London while addressing the dialectic interaction between the host society and the community through active citizenship and civic participation spanning across numerous national borders.

The aim of my research, titled ‘ Interrupting Time: A Visual Exploration of Perception within the Urban Realm’,  is to create an innovative, interdisciplinary framework in which urban sociological research can integrate a visual reading of the city. The focus of my research is perception and the interplay of temporalities of urbanism. The ways in which we perceive time within the city is not always linear- with the past, present and future collapsing into each other and the boundaries between moments in time continually shifting. Using three different photographic projects, each exploring a different aspect of urban temporality, I am questioning how time is perceived in the fractured nature of the urban realm and what role the visual field plays in this perception.

Emrah Ali Karakilic - sop02ek@gold.ac.uk

My research will explore how the decisions made by the strategist are shaped and influenced by the values, attitudes, emotions, motivations, life-style and experience and repertoire of the strategist. That is, the research aims to investigate the impact of strategists' identity on their strategic activity through integrating sociology and management, especially strategy-as-practice, studies.

Christy Kulz - so801ck@gold.ac.uk

My research explores how race, class and gender are constructed in the context of a successful London secondary academy run under the ethos 'structure liberates'. Using ethnographic methods, it will examine how the ideal student is constructed, how students move across the fields of school, home and peer groups, and how parents negotiate this corrective approach.

Marcus Morgan - marcus.morgan@gold.ac.uk  

My thesis is interested in assessing the various limitations of antihumanism in social theory and examining how a new form of critical humanism, informed by American Pragmatism, might contribute towards overcoming these limitations.        

Tahani Nadim - t.nadim@gold.ac.uk

My thesis "Inside the sequence universe: The amazing life of data and the people that look after them" is an ethnographic exploration of two of the largest bioinformatic resources, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's EMBL-Bank in Hinxton, UK and the National Center for Biotechnology Information's GenBank, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. It combines interviews with scientists working at the databases and observations carried out at the databases and in the course of explorations through the suite of bioinformatic resources built around nucleotide sequence data. The research draws on STS, the history and philosophy of science, human geography and political theory while also making references to works by Edward Gorey (1925-2000), Marcel Proust (1871-1922), Mierle Laderman Ukeles (b. 1939).


David Rose - david.rose@gold.ac.uk

I am researching the 9/11 truth movement, conspiracy theories, online video, and truth activism.

Miranda Weigler -  m.weigler@gold.ac.uk

Is there an imagined global community? I am looking at a specific population of global elites to see if they are manifesting elements of cosmopolitanism/ globalism in the same way that nationalism was manifested according the Benedict Anderson. My case study involves the World Debating community as a broad example of a Transnational Capitalist Class with a more global outlook.

Christian von Wissel - c.wissel@gold.ac.uk

My practice-based Ph.D. in Visual Sociology focuses on the relational construction of urban imaginaries and arising notions of citizenship in the peri-urban landscape of the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City. Using sensory ethnography, photographic inventory, interviews and interventions, I analyse how inhabitants relate to their urban environment out of everyday practices of navigating the city and making sense of the socio-spatial context from an ecological perspective.