Brief overview
VISUAL & INVENTIVE PRACTICE
This team taught 10 week course is designed for students interested in carrying out artistic, creative or inventive research projects. It incorporates practical workshops that focus on an inventive form of practice (e.g. photography, video, sound). In and between these workshops students are encouraged to experiment with an expanding set of sociological media and materials. In line with the inventive approach of the larger MA in Visual Sociology, the course challenges students to think about the appropriateness of different kinds of visual and sensory materials when addressing sociological questions, conducting research projects, and presenting outcomes.
PRIVACY, SURVEILLANCE & SECURITY
This 10 week popular option module explores major theoretical developments in the fields of privacy, surveillance and security in themed weeks – such as bodies, spaces, privacy-enhanced design, digital cultures and regulation. Drawing on Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, feminist technoscientists and science and technology studies we trace the trajectory of these issues from historical examples to contemporary society and engage creatively and imaginatively with this field through lectures, contemporary media analysis, visiting speakers and case studies.
MA BRANDS, COMMUNICATION & CULTURE
MA Brands, Communication and Culture aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the history and development of brands and branding, and their relationship to contemporary forms of digital communication and culture. We help them develop the ability to think critically and creatively about contemporary communications and cultural practices. They acquire an in-depth knowledge of the social, political and economic backdrop against which branding has become so important, and an understanding of the key themes and debates surrounding its development and use, including the relationship between brands and intellectual property, and the extent to which branding promotes or inhibits openness and transparency within organisations.
RESEARCHING SOCIETY & CULTURE II
This team taught 20 week course aims to help students make the transition from reading about sociological research to designing and doing their own research. It combines theoretically informed lectures with practical, hands-on workshops. It is formed of four main sections: 1. Training Sociological Attentiveness, 2.The role of reading in research (Learning from others in case studies), 3. Discovering themes in qual data and 4. Key themes in research design.
CRITICAL READINGS
This team taught 20 week core course introduces students to ‘the sociological imagination’ through a range of classic C16-C21 texts. It aims to develop the ability to think critically, to‘see through the language’ and identify the strengths and weaknesses of arguments. I taught the first section on ‘Thinking the “social” before Sociology’ which includes Descartes: ‘On Dreams, Doubt and Methods’, Kant: ‘On the Enlightenment’, Rousseau: ‘On Inequality’, Swift: ‘Gulliver’s Travels: Satire, Critique and the Possibility of Sociology’ as well as Mills: ‘The Sociological Imagination’.
THEORISING CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
To what extent do changes in social, political and economic life demand new forms of sociological theorising? What particular challenges do these changes represent to contemporary social theorists? This team taught core course explores concepts and themes in contemporary sociology concerning ‘globalization’, its conceptualization, conditions and consequences. It aims to develop critical thinking for the systematic study of contemporary social forms by deepening understanding about how social theory is developing in relation to changes in social life.
