Judy Wajcman wins 2017 Ludwik Fleck Prize
Congratulations to Professor Judy Wajcman, who has won the 2017 Ludwik Fleck prize for her book Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism (2015, University of Chicago Press). The Fleck Prize is the Society for Social Studies of Science’s oldest book prize, awarded to an outstanding book across the breadth of science and technology studies. Read more on the Society's webpage.
Sam Friedman wins 2017 ASA IPM Award for Outstanding Article
Congratulations to both Dr Sam Friedman and former LSE Sociologist Dr Daniel Laurison, who have been awarded the ‘Outstanding Article Award’ by the Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Section of the American Sociological Association. The award is for their article in the American Sociological Review entitled: 'The Class Pay Gap in Higher Professional and Managerial Occupations'. In this article they demonstrate that even when those from working-class backgrounds get into top professions in the UK they face a powerful ‘class ceiling’ in terms of earnings.
Read the article
LSE Sociology faculty highly commended for Student-Led Teaching Excellence Awards 2017
Dr Claire Moon has been highly commended in the category of Welfare and Pastoral Support, Professor Mike Savage has been highly commended for the award of Sharing Subject Knowledge and guest lecturer Dr Martina Klett-Davies has been highly commended in the category of Feedback and Communication, and has received the Class Teaching Award. Congratulations to them all!
The award provides the opportunity for students to offer feedback to those staff that have made a positive and significant difference to their learning journey. The process this year led to over 1100 individual nominations, with 450 members of staff being nominated. A review panel comprising of SSLC reps and Students’ Union officers reviewed the nomination feedback to shortlist nominees against criteria for excellent teaching and support.
Rebecca Elliott published in June issue of Harper's Magazine
Dr Rebecca Elliott has published a feature in the June issue of Harper's Magazine, in collaboration with journalist Elizabeth Rush. "Stormy Waters: The fight over New York City's flood lines" traces recent contestation between the U.S. federal government and the municipal government of New York City over the boundaries of New York City's high-risk flood zones. The feature is based in part on Dr Elliott's ongoing research into how individuals and communities are adapting to a future defined by climate change. To read the article follow link above (you will need to log in/subscribe to Harper's).
A new book by Professor Bridget Hutter and Professor Sally Lloyd-Bostock has been published by Cambridge University Press. Using a new concept - 'regulatory crisis' - this book examines how major crises may or may not affect regulation. The authors provide a detailed analysis of selected well-known disasters, tracing multiple interwoven sources of influence and competing narratives shaping crises and their impact. Their findings challenge currently influential ideas about 'regulatory failure', 'risk society' and the process of learning from disasters.
‘All future scholars of disaster, natural or otherwise, will have to consult this wide-ranging comparative study of the complex and multiple forces that aim to ignore, remediate or exploit this crucial species of public troubles. I know of no work that matches it in terms of thorough documentation and range across so wide variety of cases.’ Harvey Molotch, New York University.
Claire Moon receives Wellcome Trust Investigator Award
Dr Claire Moon, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Senior Research Associate in the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, has been awarded a prestigious Wellcome Trust Investigator Award in Humanities and Social Science for £385,000. The project is entitled ‘Human rights, human remains: forensic humanitarianism and the politics of the grave’ and she’ll be working on it for the next four years. The project addresses the power of forensic science to turn the dead body into to a witness to atrocity. It’s about the experts who make the dead speak. It’s about the families of the dead. And it’s about the dead, and what we owe them. It comprises a history of the ‘forensic turn’ in humanitarianism; an investigation of challenges and innovations in the field in the context of Mexico’s war against organised crime; and an exploration of whether, as a consequence of the forensic turn, it can be argued that the dead have human rights.
Bridget Hutter visits Chinese University of Hong Kong
Bridget Hutter, Professor of Risk Regulation, is Distinguished Visiting Scholar at CUHK, where she is giving two presentations: an MPUP Seminar on Regulatory Crises: Regulatory Encounters with Disaster, A Multi-disciplinary Approach on 28 March and a talk on Risk Regulation Research and Risk Governance Practice: The REF and Impact. She is also participating in a programme review of the MSc Social Science Programme in Public Policy.
Promotions for Sam Friedman and Suzanne Hall
Congratulations to Dr Sam Friedman and Dr Suzi Hall from the Department of Sociology, who have both passed their Major Review and will be promoted to Associate Professor. In addition, Suzi was awarded a Teaching Prize. She is currently Director of the Cities Programme and is teaching on MSC City Design and Social Sciences core courses. Sam is currently on leave working on a project, funded by an ESRC Future Research Leaders grant, examining social mobility into and within Britain’s elite occupations. You can read more about them from their staff profiles.
Leslie Sklair awarded the Frantisek Palacky Honorary Medal
At a ceremony in Prague on 22 February, Emeritus Professor Leslie Sklair received the Frantisek Palacky Honorary Medal for the Historical Sciences from the Czech Academy of Sciences. During his time in Prague, he delivered a public lecture on his new book, The Icon Project: Architecture, Cities, and Capitalist Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), and was interviewed on Czech television and radio.
Honorary doctorate awarded to Charis Thompson
Congratulations to Professor Charis Thompson who has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in January in recognition of her significant scientific contributions to the social and cultural study of emerging technologies. The ceremony will take place in November.
Suzi Hall at the Teaching Café
On 2 February the Teaching and Learning Centre and Educational Strategy Unit’s Lent Term Teaching Café explored the connection between research and education, focusing on three examples of modules where students are supported to produce their own original research. Dr Suzi Hall from LSE Sociology, pictured here with the publication Infrastructural Urbanism produced by MSc City Design and Social Science students in 2016, talked about the City Design Research Studio course. Read more about it.
New research uncovers 'class pay gap' in Britain's professions
People from working class backgrounds who get a professional job are paid an average of £6,800 (17 per cent) less each year than colleagues from more affluent backgrounds, research for the Social Mobility Commission has revealed. Using extensive data from the UK Labour Force Survey (LFS), Dr Sam Friedman and Dr Daniel Laurison of the Department of Sociology at LSE alongside academics from UCL, examined access to the professions and the impact of socio-economic background on earnings. Follow link above for more on this story. Read more about it.
Ricky Burdett awarded CBE
Ricky Burdett, Director of LSE Cities research centre and Urban Age and Professor of Urban Studies at LSE, has been awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) as part of the New Year’s Honours List for 2017. The Honours List recognises people who have made achievements in public life and committed themselves to serving and helping Britain. Professor Burdett’s CBE is for services to urban planning and design. Read more about it.
Jalal Pour highly commended in the Booth Prize at the LSE Research Festival
Congratulations to MSc Sociology student Jalal Pour who was highly commended in the Booth Prize for his headlined abstract - Driving in the Gig Economy: road to freedom or bercapitalism? This was part of the LSE Research Festival, an annual celebration of LSE's social science research and its impact. As this year was the centenary of the death of pioneering social science reformer Charles Booth, the Research Festival had teamed up with the International Inequalities Institute who held a conference on Booth’s work on the same day. Professor Niki Lacey from the III was the judge of the Booth Prize, which was for the submission that best matched Charles Booth’s research themes of poverty and inequality. Read more here.
Judy Wajcman to speak at De Lange Conference X
On 6 December Professor Judy Wajcman will be speaking at the De Lange Conference X at Rice University. Her lecture, entitled 'Automation, Robotics and the Temporality of Everyday Life' will examine the ways in which robotics embody the desire to save valuable time by enabling us to complete tasks ever faster and more efficiently. Read more on the conference.
Pat McGovern on Brexit and immigration control
How many extra civil servants will Britain have to recruit in order to cope with Brexit? Dr Patrick Mcgovern says in the Financial Times “An increase will certainly be necessary because the volume of admissions work can only go up.” Read the article (you will need to log in or create an account, LSE staff and students can do so for free).
Pat McGovern seminar at Cornell on workplace research
On 1 November Dr Patrick McGovern was invited to give a seminar at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University on some of his latest research which relates to problems of generalization and theory in workplace case study research.
Claire Moon on the human rights of the dead
Claire Moon, Associate Professor in the Sociology Department and Senior Research Associate in the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, has just published an article entitled ‘Human rights, human remains: forensic humanitarianism and the human rights of the dead’. The article is the first to label, define and historicise a distinctive and growing trend in global humanitarian practice: what Moon calls ‘forensic humanitarianism’. This involves the forensic investigation of mass graves in the wake of state crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The article also initiates a distinctive and controversial argument that, as a result of this recent humanitarian phenomenon, the dead have human rights. The article appears in a special issue of International Social Science Journal and is the result of a workshop reappraising contemporary humanitarianism at the Social Trends Institute in Barcelona in January 2015. The issue includes articles by Michael Barnett (George Washington), Peter Stamatov (Yale), Iain Wilkinson (Kent) and John Brewer (Queen’s University, Belfast).
Mike Savage shortlisted for Times Higher Education Award 2016
Professor Mike Savage was shortlisted for the Times Higher Education (THE) Award 2016 for outstanding research supervisor of the year. The annual THE awards celebrates outstanding examples of best practice in higher education. The award criteria for outstanding research supervisor of the year is for the individual who has created "the most supportive, stimulating and inspirational research environment for PhD students”.
Suzi Hall: Are Migrants City-Takers or City-Makers?
In episode one of a six part series entitled 'Six Impossible Ideas (after Brexit)', Dr Suzi Hall walked us through her research on ordinary streets in UK cities that challenges the perceptions of migrants as a burden. From Peckham's Rye Lane, a super-diverse street in South London, Suzi talked about what streets like this mean for the economy and what we can learn about the ways migration shapes modern cities. This six part series (of which Suzi Hall's work is one component) draws on six LSE experts and explores different disciplinary perspectives on migration.
Watch the episode
Launch of the International Inequalities Institute Atlantic Fellows programme
Mike Savage, Co-Director of the LSE’s International Inequalities Institute (III) is delighted to announce the launch of the III’s Atlantic Fellows programme, a 20-year programme funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies to support leaders tackling inequalities. This is an ambitious programme designed to build a global community of leaders dedicated to changing policy, practice and public dialogue around inequalities. Follow the link above to read more. The Atlantic Fellows programme at the III is created with a grant of £64.4m from The Atlantic Philanthropies.This grant, the largest ever in the history of the LSE, will do much to inscribe critical social science at the heart of the LSE’s intellectual agenda.
Read the press release
The Department of Sociology is hosting the campus-wide three day festival entitled 'Resist: Festival of Ideas and Actions' from 28-30 September. The festival will explore the distinct ways in which the theme of resistance has been interpreted and understood within academic research, the arts, grassroots activism campaigns, student debate and mainstream politics, through a variety of events including workshops, debates, street food, films, music and more. And on Monday 26th September fashion designer and activist Vivienne Westwood will get things going with a discussion about how we can resist propaganda through critical thinking, the collaboration of intellectuals and activists, and the arts. This event will start at 6.30pm at LSE's Hong Kong Theatre and is free and open to all but you will need a ticket.
Ayça Çubukçu on the Turkey coup attempt
Dr Ayça Çubukçu, Assistant Professor in Human Rights in the Department of Sociology, has written on the recent events in Turkey in the wake of the failed coup attempt on 15 July. Her piece, published in The Guardian, is entitled 'It’s the will of the Turkish people, Erdogan says. But which people?'.