Kate Nash BSc PhD

sociology of human rights; cultural politics; political sociology; feminist theory; citizenship; social movements; equality and diversity

I did a Sociology degree at City University as a mature student, completing in 1990, and then a PhD in the Department of Government at Essex University, finishing in 1995. I've been teaching in the Department since 1999.

I am Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy at Goldsmiths, and a Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. In 2010 I was Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research, New York and Vincent Wright Professor at Sciences Po, Paris.

Teaching

I am currently convening and teaching on 'Thinking Sociologically' at MA level, 'Theorising Contemporary Society', a third year core course, and a third year option 'Citizenship and Human Rights'. I also teach on the first year core course 'Modern Knowledge, Modern Power'.

I am currently supervising or co-supervising the following PhD students:

• Miranda Iosoffidis 'Violence, politics, and agency' (ESRC Funded)
• Jen Bufton ‘LGBT rights as human rights’

I have co-supervised the following PhD students to completion:

• Hilde Stephenson 'Making global publics? Communication and knowledge production in the World Social Forum' (ESRC funded) 2011;
• Elisa Fiaccadori 'The War on Terror and the State of Exception' (ESRC Funded) 2011;
• Laurence Pawley '“Constructing the Audience”: Manifestations of Citizenship in the BBC' (ESRC funded) 2009;
• Jennie Munday 'Crisis in the Countryside? An Investigation of the Countryside Alliance as a Rural Social Movement' (ESRC funded) 2008;
• Madeleine Kennedy McFoy 'Situated Citizenships, Routed Belongings: Learning and Living French and British Citizenship at School' (ESRC funded) 2007;
• Rachel White 'Gender Exclusion from the Indy Public Sphere' (ESRC funded) 2006;
• Heidi Lempp 'Medical Education: the Transition from Student to Pre-registrar Doctor' 2004.

I am especially interested in supervising PhD students working on issues of cultural politics in relation to human rights, citizenship, social movements and media.

Radio

February 2012 - click HERE to listen to Kate Nash being interviewed about her research on BBC Radio 4

Research interests

I am currently writing a book, The Sociology of Human Rights, for Cambridge University Press.  It is proving challenging.  Contributing to the emerging sociology of human rights means thinking about human rights ‘beyond legalism’ – that is beyond fetishisation of ‘the rule of law’.  In part it requires investigating the conditions and limits of law.  But it also involves conceptualising the political, social and cultural forms in which uses of human rights are developed, gain credibility, and are (usually partially and often controversially) institutionalised.  A big part of the challenge is that, if human rights is a global project (for good or ill), to study human rights means becoming a reflexively situated ‘global sociologist’.  Developing tools to analyse what human rights ‘do’ in very different local, national and international contexts is demanding conceptually and empirically.  

Selected publications