An NCRM training event for early career researchers, led by Sue Heath, Alison Fuller, Cathy Murray and Charlie Walker, University of Southampton, Friday May 21st 2010

This one day workshop will focus on some of the methodological challenges which arise when negotiating various dimensions of difference between researchers and the young people involved in their research, alongside a consideration of the impact of the specific contexts in which research on young people’s lives might be conducted. The day will consist of presentations, workshop activities and opportunities for participants to reflect upon their own experiences. It is targeted at researchers who are relatively new to youth research, and will be particularly suited to postgraduate students and early career researchers with an interest in youth research in a variety of settings.

For full details and information on how to book a place, please follow this link:

http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/TandE/events2010/0521/index.php  

In this fifth edition of the main PG Focus series we are very pleased to welcome Gill Ridgley of the British Library, for an introduction to the resources on offer resources on offer; and advice on how postgraduate sociologists might best make use of them.  

Gill is Curator in the Department of Scholarship and Collections.  Her current research interests are in sport particularly sport autobiographies; and will shortly be launching an Olympic games website for the British Library, which looks at sport and the Olympics in a social sciences context. Further information and access to some of the resources discussed in the show can be found at the British Library website - http://www.bl.uk

This episode was produced, edited and hosted by Mike Bracher for the BSA PG Forum.

A transcript of this episode can be downloaded here

This is the third of five recordings made at the recent BSA Presidential Event, held at the British Library on 15th February 2010.

This third part features Brian Wynne (Professor of Sociology - Lancaster University) whose speech was entitled: 'Climate Change Science'.

Professor Wynne's speech is followed by the closing Question and Answer session from the event.

This series of podcasts was produced by Mike Bracher for the British Sociological Association.

Please note that this series is a separate production from the PG Focus series also hosted on this site.

This is the fourth of five recordings made at the recent BSA Presidential Event, held at the British Library on 15th February 2010.

This fourth part features Alan Warde (Professor of Sociology - University of Manchester) whose speech was entitled: 'How Sociological understandings of routine consumption might inform effective strategies for enhancing sustainability'.

This series of podcasts was produced by Mike Bracher for the British Sociological Association.

Please note that this series is a separate production from the PG Focus series also hosted on this site.

This is the third of five recordings made at the recent BSA Presidential Event, held at the British Library on 15th February 2010.

This third part features Tim Jackson (Professor of Sociology - University of Surrey) whose speech was entitled: 'The social and structural dimensions of sustainable living'.

This series of podcasts was produced by Mike Bracher for the British Sociological Association.

Please note that this series is a separate production from the PG Focus series also hosted on this site.

This is the second of five recordings made at the recent BSA Presidential Event, held at the British Library on 15th February 2010.

This second part features John Urry (Distinguished Professor of Sociology - Lancaster University) whose speech was entitled: 'An introduction to the issue of how to put society into climate change'. 

Immediately following John is Elizabeth Shove (Professor of Sociology - Lancaster University) whose address is entitled: 'Is society missing?'.  These contributions are followed by a short question and answer session.

John Urry's speech begins at 00:00 - Elizabeth Shove's speech begins at 25:45

If you would like to follow up on some of the themes raised in the speech or in the subsequent discussion, you will be able to hear more from John Urry (from 16th Feb 2010) & Elizabeth Shove (9th March 2010) here.

This series of podcasts was produced by Mike Bracher for the British Sociological Association.

Please note that this series is a separate production from the PG Focus series also hosted on this site.

This is the first of five recordings made at the recent BSA Presidential Event, held at the British Library on 15th February 2010.

This first part features an introduction from Joanna Newman (Head of Higher Education at the British Library); followed by the first presentation from Malcolm Wicks MP, entitled: 'Climate Change - what is the question?'.  The presentation is also followed by a short question and answer session.

If you would like to follow up on some of the themes raised in the speech or in the subsequent discussion, you will be able to hear more from Malcolm Wicks and discussion contributor Les Levidow here from 16th March 2010.

This series of podcasts was produced by Mike Bracher for the British Sociological Association.

Please note that this series is a separate production from the PG Focus series also hosted on this site.

24^th – 25^th March 2010 

Radisson Blu Hotel, Bristol

http://www.ukcge.ac.uk/events/eventsarea/residential2010

Please find attached a copy of the programme for this year’s UKCGE Residential Workshop.

This event will present an opportunity, for the first time, for Graduate Deans and related staff, Research Administrators, Academic Staff and Post-Docs to meet in Special Interest Groups for discussion of issues of particular relevance to each Group. The Workshop will focus on key aspects relating to recruitment, supervision and outputs from PhD candidates, in the context of the Impact Agenda. In particular, best practice in Recruitment, Supervision, Examination and Enhancing Outputs will form the focus of small Thematic Group discussions, where delegates can share their problems and solutions in establishing effective and efficient research degree programmes.

In particular, best practice in Recruitment, Supervision and Enhancing Outputs will form the focus of small Thematic Group discussions, where delegates can share their problems and solutions in establishing effective and efficient research degree programmes. New developments in PhD structure, including the “Alternative format PhD” and “PhD by published work”, and Research Council policies on the career development of RAs and Post-Docs as members of the supervisory team, will also be covered.

Summaries of all discussions will be presented in Plenary Sessions to ensure that all delegates benefit from the collective experience shared in each Workshop Discussion group.

This Residential Workshop is intended for Graduate Deans, Research Supervisors, Research Administrators, Post-Docs and all those involved in the management of PGR student programmes.

The cost of the Residential is £380 for UKCGE Members and £420 for non-members. This price includes overnight accommodation, all meals from dinner on 24th March to lunch on 25th March and other refreshments served during the workshop. 

To download a copy of the programme for the event and to book your place please go to: http://www.ukcge.ac.uk/events/eventsarea/residential2010

PRACTICES ON THE MOVE: DYNAMICS, CIRCULATION AND DIFFUSION A thematic track in the EASST 2010 Conference 1-4 September in Trento, Italy

This track provides an opportunity to move beyond the study of situated practices (Suchman 1994; Hutchins 1995), and to develop and explore the theoretical resources required to understand and analyse their spatial and temporal dynamics.  The tradition of studying specific sites of practice has tended to obscure vital questions about mechanisms of circulation and diffusion: how do the material, cognitive and symbolic elements of practices travel? How do necessarily local sociomaterial practices relate to path-dependencies and global trends in the elements of which they are composed? How do related temporalities of circulation affect the transformation and persistence of  social practices?

Contributors are invited to fuse concepts from geography, history, management and social theory with science and technology studies in order to understand and capture critical trajectories of practices including those of escalation, reinvention, retreat and erosion.  In pursuing these questions, this track seeks to address and confront the multi-sited, multi-scalar and temporal relations involved in the reproduction of practice.  The call for proposals for EASST 2010 represents ‘science and technology as an ecology of heterogeneous elements and interactions’.  This track provides a chance to focus on the ways that diverse elements circulate and on the implications of these distinctive travel patterns for the emergence, durability and distribution of specific socio-material practices.

The track will enable different ‘strands’ of science and technology studies to come together in new configurations.  For example, how do theories of innovation (Von Hippel 2005), diffusion and marketing mesh with notions of sociotechnical scripting (Akrich 1992)?  Likewise, how do technologies ‘carry’ knowledge cultures and vice versa? This deliberately conceptual/theoretically-oriented track puts the geographies, choreographies and dynamics of sociomaterial practices centre stage.

We invite papers that address these fundamental theoretical concerns from contrasting positions and perspectives, and with reference to a range of empirical cases – in particular, detailed analyses of mobile technologies; ICTs; embedded infrastructures; scientific networks; formal and informal communities of practice and distributed material cultures.

 Suggested themes include:

-    The life of elements: how do the heterogeneous ingredients of practice circulate?

-       How are local knowledges/technological configurations abstracted, distributed and ‘reversed’ or re-enacted.

-       Codification, inscription, regulation

-       Sites of exchange: exhibitions, internet, media and mediation

-       Methodology: how to study paths, projects, processes

-       How technologies carry or are carried by practices

-   Different temporalities of circulation and how these shape processes of innovation

-   How elements and practices become ‘stuck’; how they endure and disappear and how they become immobile

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted online (following website instructions) by 2010 March 15^th.