Research

Research in the department is built upon a commitment to interdisciplinary approaches and to critically engaging with a social world undergoing constant change.

Building upon the department’s emerging civic agenda, colleagues are committed to work that actively engages with local communities, as well as that which contributes to national and international policy debates. Members of staff carry out research funded by the UK government, the European Union, research councils, charities and other organisations.

The department embraces the idea of sociology and criminology as encompassing both local and global concerns. It is concerned with producing research that is historical and contemporary; that seeks to understand social structures and cultural phenomena; and that engages with its object of study through both theoretical and empirical work. Hand-in-hand with this approach is a commitment to research that engages directly with the undergraduate curriculum so that students are active participants in the departmental research culture and thus fully conversant with what sociological research sets out to achieve.

More about our major research projects

Research Excellence Framework 2014

In the Sociology REF2014 submission, more than 2/3 of research was ranked either internationally leading or world-leading (3* and 4*) while Sociology is ranked in the top 10 of Sociology submissions for Impact. Meanwhile, in the Social Policy and Social Work submission 60% of research was also ranked of 3* or 4* star quality.

Researchers within Sociology belong to the Research Centre in Applied Social Sciences (RCASS). Hosted by the Faculty of Languages, Humanities and Social Sciences, the aim of RCASS is to produce critically-engaged, high quality research that challenges common-sense ways about how we think about the world and our place in it.

The Centre aims to provide an inter-disciplinary home for critical research that contributes to policy-making debates and decision-making, while genuinely impacting upon the work and strategies of local organisations and communities. This is an ethos that we hope our postgraduate students will fully engage with through the opportunities provided to then through, for example, the Humanities in Public programme of events and Research Space, a timetabled space in which staff and research students get together to discuss research issues.

Read more our REF 2014 Results

PhD research opportunities

Staff are available for supervision towards the degree of PhD across their varied research interests.

Sociology and Criminology Research Degrees

Students wishing to undertake a PhD in the department will benefit from working alongside a highly committed staff group and from an in-depth training in the application of both qualitative and quantitative methods.