Research in SSPARC covers three broad and overlapping thematic research areas or 'clusters':
Care, health and wellbeing
Our research in this area explores interactions between lived experience, policy and practice. We adopt a critical perspective on policy, service delivery and the practices of workers within statutory and voluntary sector agencies. We have a particular interest in collective action amongst service users and the contribution of experiential knowledge and lay perspectives to research and public governance.
Find out more about the care, health and wellbeing research cluster
Crime, resistance and security
The activities of the CRAS research cluster combine critical approaches to the traditional concerns of criminology and criminal justice with research interests in social control, surveillance and security as well as in forms of deviance, protest and resistance. Thus, while we are interested in undertaking work which explores the operation of criminal justice systems, we are as often preoccupied by the recognition that such 'systems' are frequently dysfunctional and that justice may not always be their chief purpose or outcome.
Find out more about the crime, resistance and security research cluster
Culture, identity and society
The interdisciplinary culture, identity and society cluster (CIS) draws on critical theory to examine the intersection between social structures and identities in local, national and transnational cultural contexts. The work of the cluster seeks to interrogate and expose the operation of power and social inequalities, and to critically examine hegemonic discourses which shape the production of knowledge and identities. We develop and explore contemporary interdisciplinary critical social theory and engage in a wide variety of sociocultural 'sites' as contexts for this work.
Find out more about the culture, identity and society research cluster
