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Research areas

Within the Social Science and Policy research and enterprise group, we have three key research areas. Each research area has a multidisciplinary approach to exploring three different themes.

Care, health and wellbeing (CHEW)

Research into care, health and wellbeing examines 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.

We seek to understand the social policy issues surrounding the processes of caring, the nature and impact of interventions and the context of wellbeing. We collaborate with users, providers and academics to ensure that our research informs current social care practice. 

Age and ageing

Research considers the lived experience of ageing and old age within the context of social justice, challenging ageism and informing practice. 

Emotional and mental health

Research examines the role models of emotional and mental health and the experience of services with a focus on user involvement, drawing upon values-based practice as well as insights from medical sociology, community psychology, counselling and psychotherapy. 

Information, technology and care

Research explores the relationship between information, technology and care, drawing on insights from science and technology, sociology of health and critical information systems. 

Crime, resistance and security (CRAS)

This research area combines critical approaches to the traditional concerns of criminology and criminal justice with research interests in social control, surveillance and security, as well as 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.

Criminalisation, inequality and injustice

Research investigates criminalisation and the extent to which interventions to prevent or control illegalities can be counter-productive and based on wider inequalities, deprivations or rights breaches. 

Domestic and intimate violence

Research explores domestic violence, including intimate partner violence and child to parent violence and compares experiences, interventions and approaches throughout the world. 

Security, safety, self and justice

Research examines the perception of security, risk and prevention in the context of a hardening of attitude towards the delinquent, deprived and different and considers subsequent problematic interventions. 

Firearms, crime and gun control

 

Research analyses the diverse aspects of the relationship between firearms and society and findings are used to influence both policy and public debate.

Cultural identities and social spaces (CISS)

We work at the intersections of culture, identity, society and space to explore how social and political phenomena are produced, experienced and felt, in order to interrogate their consequences. Our work is orientated towards issues of justice, equality, political activism and agency. We are interested in how particular power relations are formed in specific, local, national and transnational cultural, spatial and political contexts and what these may mean for our identity, our ability to influence and our sense of self.

We develop and explore contemporary, interdisciplinary, critical theory across psychology, sociology, criminology, politics and social policy, engaging in a wide variety of sociocultural 'sites' as contexts for this work including: leisure, consumption, embodiment, mediated communication, sexualities, masculinities, childhood, science, debt, mobilities, spatialities, technologies, work, the environment, and outer space. Our work exposes the mechanisms by which we are ‘marketised’ by the current political and economic rationalities and seeks to explore meaningful, ethical, just and sustainable ways of living our lives.

Consumption

Research scrutinises the nature of consumption and studies the relationship between consumption, identity and representation in order to inform about issues of inclusion, exclusion, ethics and influence. 

Mobilities

Research analyses mobility in its broadest sense, considering movements of people, objects and ideas, as well as, online lives and communication technologies. 

Social and political theory

Research studies theory and social movements in a variety of socio-political contexts and addresses fundamental questions about political power and social order and impacts on identity, recognition, justice and equality. 

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