March 28, 2019 – The Sociological Review

To whom it may concernCan you hear your own wordsThat fortify justify normalise these hallowed hallsAs walls of whiteness standing highTo keep us on the other side.Taming us, shaming usLetting us in if we are silent or compliant. But listen up, these walls have eyes and earsYour ugly words and dirty work don’t make poetryBut […]

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Sivanandan’s Pessimistic Hope in a Degraded Age

By Ben Gidley I moved to London in 1991. In many ways, it was a miserable year for me. I started a Philosophy degree at a Russell Group university, and I found myself loathing the entitlement and privilege, the casual homophobia, racism and class conceit of the student body and most of the lecturers. Reading […]

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Brexit

Podcasts

What does Brexit mean for disabled migrants and carers from the European Economic Area?

In this podcast our managing editor, Michaela Benson, discusses the implications of Brexit for disabled EEA migrants and carers with Dieuwertje Dyi Huijg, Yraegael Alexis and Christiane Link, chair of Disire. Originally posted 16th February 2018.

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The 2018 University Strike, the Tuc’s Racism at Work Survey and Hegemony in Higher Education

By Stephen Ashe Brendan McGeever’s rapid response piece in Discover Society contends that the ongoing strike action in defence of our pensions ‘needs to be more attentive to the ways race, borders and nation are reproduced within higher education itself’. This is urgent. Not only do these issues feature prominently on placards and during rallies, teach-ins and teach-outs […]

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‘Perhaps Our Time Has Come’ – USS Strike as the Beginning of a New Politics for Uk Higher Education

By Sol Gamsu Last Friday was our only day back at work in two weeks – an island of “normality” – but like many I found the return to work strange. Crossing the pedestrian picket line at Bath felt odd. I missed the camaraderie and the new found collective strength and energy of the spaces of the […]

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Collective Action and the Realisation of Your Own Smallness

By Mark Carrigan After nine days of strike action, I’ve begun to realise how formative I have found this experience and how frequently I will think back to it in coming months and years. In part, this is a reflection of the novelty of the action itself for me but also the novelty of the […]

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The ‘Structure of Feeling’ of the USS Strike

By Craig Haslop and Rosalynd Southern We are both already so proud of the achievements of the Universities College Union (UCU) and our colleagues – academic and support staff standing side by side with students – striking against the move by UUK to slash our pensions by over 50%. Through this action, we have already […]

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Think Twice, It’s Alright: Reflections on Leaving Academia

By Meritxell Ramírez-i-Ollé I write this blog post moved by a mixture of feelings of rebellion, excitement and thankfulness. I rebel against the sense of urgency, determinism and short-sightedness that has pervaded my short postdoctoral life; I am excited about developing a more creative, unconventional and open-ended career as a sociologist; and I am extremely […]

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The Irrational Pace of Craft-Time

By Fabian Cannizzo The era of mass higher education is riddled with competing motivations, each shaping academic work and planning. For Blackmore and Kandiko, academic life is an intersection of enjoyment, monetary rewards, and ‘prestige economies’. Affect, capital, and status might be seen to draw the attention of intellectual labourers in different directions. Enjoyment may emerge […]

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The accidental cartoonist: learning the craft of the graphic essay

Dr Kate Carruthers Thomas My current research investigates gendered experiences of work and career within higher education (HE) and implications for normative linear career metaphors (pipeline, trajectory, ladder). This research has its particular challenges. I am conducting it within my own university, so grappling with the dilemmas of insider research, participant concerns over confidentiality and […]

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Weapons Of The Strike*

By Dimitrios Theodossopoulos Between the 22nd February and 16th March 2018, university staff (and students) across the UK took part in the largest strike within UK higher education for decades. Drawn from observations from the picket line, the graphic commentary can only partly capture the emancipatory spontaneity of the moment—the colourful banners and slogans, the […]

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Preparing to Think in Order to Prepare to Speak

By Mark Carrigan In the last couple of years, I’ve done around eighty talks on a variety of topics across a whole range of different settings. The biographical, professional and intellectual reasons why I’ve done so many are a topic for another post. What concerns me at the moment is how I prepare for them. […]

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My Academic Diary: Jackie Goode

Fieldwork diary. On a project investigating the intra-household distribution of income in families reliant on (in-work and out-of-work) benefits, I am to interview partners separately. The ‘sample’ was spread all over the UK. I ‘clustered’ them geographically to fit in as many as possible in a week. I was away all week for a period […]

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My Academic Diary: An Anonymous Member of the Academic Precariat

I am what some call a ‘portfolio worker’, a ridiculous managerial term referring to those who make up their working week with a variety of different jobs. In my case, I work part-time as a university tutor, and part-time as a researcher. There are also significant elements of my ‘portfolio’ that I undertake ‘voluntarily’: a […]

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Populism, People and the Media: Some Opening Reflections

By Gholam Khiabany, Des Freedman and Natalie Fenton Political life in the West has become increasingly volatile and polarised. Anger at elites, disillusion with established forms of representation and experience of economic uncertainty has led to a growth of support for populist parties. This resurgence of ‘populism’ – clearly articulated in the 2016 EU referendum […]

Day: March 28, 2019