Sociology Seminar Series

Upcoming & Recent Seminars

6 November 2025 13:00 - 14:30 | D422 Newman Building

Ambassador David Gill
How to Come to Terms with the East-German Past: The Case of the Gauck Behoerde

Abstract:  Between 1950 and 1989, the GDR's Staatssicherheit ("Stasi") employed a total of 274,000 people in an effort to protect East Germany from 'within' ('class enemies'). At its height the Stasi employed some 90.000 people full-time and drew on 170.000 unofficial informants. It became one of the most repressive control organisms in modern times. Its existence and abolishment has caused a passionate debate about the roles of perpetrators, victims and silent bystanders. In his talk David Gill will draw on his experience between 1990 and 1992 when he was first Chairman of the Citizens' Committee at the HQ of the former East Germany's Ministry of State Security, then Head of Administration of the Parliamentary Special Committee for the dissolution of the GDR's state security apparatus ("Stasi"), and finally Spokesman and Head of Division of the Federal Commissioner for the Files of the State Security Service of the former GDR (Gauck Behoerde).

• David Gill is Germany's Ambassador to Ireland, a post he has held since August 2024. He previously served as Consul General in New York (2017-2024) and as State Secretary and Head of the Office of the Federal President (2012-2017). During the Peaceful Revolution he became Chairman of the Citizens Committee at the Stasi headquarters in Berlin in early 1990 and later secretary of the committee overseeing the dissolution of the Stasi at the East German only free elected parliament the "Volkskammer". He served as Spokesman and Head of the Research Division of the Federal Commissioner for the Files of the State Security Service ("Stasi") of the former GDR, the so-called Gauck Behoerde from 1990 to 1992.

24th October 2024 13:00 - 14:15 | D422 Newman Building

Prof. William Outhwaite, Newcastle University
European Sociology: A Sociological Interpretation

Abstract:  In this talk, it is suggested that with the EU we have something like a European regional state, expanding and occasionally contracting, and a broader European society underpinning it.  We will look briefly at the history of sociological engagement with contemporary European studies and some of the theoretical models brought to bear on the EU. The talk ends with some brief consideration of European macroregions and current threats to the EU and to Europe more broadly.

• William Outhwaite, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK, taught at the universities of Sussex, in the School of European Studies, and Newcastle, where he is emeritus professor of sociology. His interests include the philosophy of the social sciences (especially realism), social theory (especially critical theory), political sociology and the sociology of knowledge. He is now working mainly on contemporary Europe.

10th October 2024 13:00 - 14:15 | D422 Newman Building

Dr. Kieran Connell, Queens University Belfast
"No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs": Race, Immigration and the Making of Multicultural Britain

Abstract:  Drawing on his new book, Multicultural Britain: A People’s History, Dr Kieran Connell seeks to answer the question of how Britain became increasingly multicultural by focusing on Birmingham, Britain’s second city, during the 1960s, a period of rapid socio-political change. Birmingham was the site of largescale settlement from Britain’s former colonies in the Caribbean, South Asia and Ireland. Connell focuses on an archive of photographs taken in 1968 in a single inner-city area of Birmingham by Janet Mendelsohn, then a student under Stuart Hall at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. In so doing, Connell underscores the importance of urban change, social proximity and everyday relationships to what Hall characterised as Britain’s unruly, often-contradictory ‘drift’ towards the multicultural.

• Kieran Connell is a social and cultural historian of modern Britain. His research interests include the New Left, cultural studies, urban history, race, immigration and multiculturalism. His most recent book is: 'Multiculturalism: A People's History' (2024)
  
  

19th September 2024 13:00-14:50 | G109, Newman Building

Prof. Catherine Hall, University College London
Racial Capitalism across the Black/ White Atlantic

Abstract: The lecture explores what is meant by ‘racial capitalism’, a term that is used to focus on the centrality of racial inequalities to the formation of the modern world. It draws on work on eighteenth-century England and Jamaica, and in particular the activities of one transatlantic white family, to describe how ‘race’ structured not only the plantation economy and society but also forms of capitalist organization and cultural practice in the metropole.

• Catherine Hall is Emerita Professor of History and Chair of the Centre of the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at UCL. She has written extensively on the history of Britain, gender and empire including Family Fortunes (1987), co-authored with Leonore Davidoff, Civilising Subjects (2002) Macaulay and Son (2012) and, with others, Legacies of British Slave-ownership (2014). From 2009-16 she was principal investigator on the LBS project www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs. Her latest book is Lucky Valley: Edward Long and the history of racial capitalism (2024).

5th June 2024 13:00-14:00 | D422, Newman Building, School of Sociology

Prof. Neil McLaughlin, McMaster University, Canada
The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon: How an obscure Canadian psychologist become the most hated and loved public intellectual in the world

Abstract:In 2016, University of Toronto psychologist Jordan Peterson became an internationally known and widely hated intellectual provocateur because of his controversial views on gender pronouns, anti racist training and what he then called political correctness.Drawing on sociological role theory, this talk will offer an explanation of the rise, the fall and the institutionalization of Peterson's reputation, contributing to the sociology of reputations while laying out an analysis of the political and intellectual stakes raised by his fame and global cultural influence. 

• Neil McLaughlin teaches sociological theory and writes on public intellectuals, the sociology of ideas and critical theory. His most recent publications include Erich Fromm and Global Public Sociology Bristol University Press, 2021, and "Ideacide: how on-line petitions and Open letters underline academic Freedom and Free expression" (with Rhoda Hassmann) Human Rights Quarterly (August 2022). He has also published on the history and crisis of sociology, the public sociology debates and critical theory.

15th February 2024 13:00-14:00 | D422, Newman Building, School of Sociology

Dingxin Zhao, University of Zhejiang
Changing patterns of social protest in Post-Mao China

Abstract:This talk argues that collective actions in post-Mao China have developed in three overlapping phases. The first phase, between 1976 and 1989, is characterized by the large-scale state-centered protests. The second lasts roughly between 1992 and 2002. Protests of this period tend to be small-to-medium in size, local and economic-oriented. The third phase started around 2002 and lasts until 2012. In this period, protesters gain significant rights consciousness, protests are increasingly proactive and grow a populist tendency, and some protests (particular the on-line protests) have experienced a tendency of repoliticalization. This talk provides an interpretation of this pattern and speculates about the future development of collective actions in China.  

• Dingxin Zhao is director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, and chair of the Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University. He is also Max Palevsky Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Chicago. His research covers historical sociology, political sociology, social movements, social change and economic development. His interests also extend to sociological theory and methodology. Zhao has publications in journals such as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, American Behavioral Scientist, Social Forces, Mobilization, and Sociology. He is the author of awards-winning books The Power of Tiananmen (2001) and The Confucian-Legalist State (2015) in English, and several other books in Chinese. His current research project is on the epistemological and ontological aspects of social science methodologies.

30th November 2023 13:00-14:00 | D422, Newman Building, School of Sociology

Sara O'Sullivan, University College Dublin
Talking the Talk? The First Year of Gender Pay Gap Reporting in Ireland

Abstract:Two key legacy features of labour markets globally are a sexual division of labour (Connell 1987) and a persistent gender pay gap. One policy solution that has been implemented in the past decade across the OECD is gender wage gap reporting. Making data on pay available publicly potentially increases awareness of the problem, something that proponents see as likely to increase organisations’ efforts to close the pay gap (OECD 2023). The Gender Pay Gap Information Act (2021) required organisations in the Republic of Ireland with more than 250 employees to report on their hourly gender pay gap for the first time. Working with a date of their choice in June 2022, organisations were obliged to analyse their pay data by gender and to publish this data in December 2022, either on their website or in some other public forum. The act also required organisations to explain any gender pay gaps and report the actions planned to mitigate them in the report (see Benedí Lahuerta (2022) for a useful overview of the background to the introduction of this legislation).

This research was prompted by the release of the 2022 results and the need to systematically collect baseline data from year one of the GPG reporting cycle. Although there are plans to develop an online reporting system for the 2023 reporting cycle, the 2022 data was only available on individual organisations' websites. In this paper I will give a brief overview of the quantitative data identifying where gender wage gaps are largest and smallest, and pointing to some of the limitations of the data. My primary focus will be on the explanations and actions provided for gender pay gaps in the narrative sections of the reports. I’ll show how organisations use a range of strategies that render gender inequalities invisible. I’ll also identify a number of problematic features of the gender equality initiatives proposed by organisations in the reports (Ryan 2023). I will conclude by considering the value of gender pay gap reporting.

• Sara is an Associate Professor in the School of Sociology, University College Dublin. Her main areas of research are gender, the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and sociology of higher education

20th April 2023 13:00-14:00| D422, Newman Building, School of Sociology/ Zoom 

Uğur Ümit Üngör |University of Amsterdam

Assad’s Militias and Mass Violence in Syria

Abstract: From the outbreak of the uprising in March 2011, a central element of the Assad regime’s violent crackdown on the mass protests in Syria was its deployment of a large number of pro-government militias, the so-called “Shabbiha”, a catch-all category for irregular, pro-government militias dressed in civilian gear and linked organically to the regime. When the uprising erupted, they carried out storming of neighborhoods, dispersion of demonstrations, as well as property crimes, torture, kidnapping, assassination, sexual violence, and massacres. In this talk, Üngör will attempt to understand these armed groups by focusing on their changing relationship with the state. The value of this approach is that it can develop the thesis that whereas the Shabbiha may seem like a novel phenomenon, they have deeper roots in history. Rather than relying on weak state theories, the talk examines paramilitarism through the prism of the Syrian state’s changing ability to covertly outsource and subcontract illegal and illegitimate violence against civilians. This research is based on a historical-sociological lens, using both close analysis of unique primary documents, immersive ethnography during nine years of fieldwork across Europe and the Middle East, and most importantly: in-depth interviews with approximately 40 Shabbiha paramilitaries.

• Uğur Ümit Üngör is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD Institute in Amsterdam. His main area of interest is the history and sociology of mass violence, with a particular focus on the modern and contemporary Middle East. He has won several academic awards and held visiting positions in Dublin, Vancouver, Budapest, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Edinburgh. He has published books and articles on various aspects and cases of genocide, including the Armenian genocide. His most recent publication is Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State (Oxford University Press, 2020), Syrian Gulag: Inside Assad’s Prisons, 1970-2020 (I.B. Tauris, 2023), and Assad’s Militias and Mass Violence in Syria (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, 2023). He is an editor of the Journal of Perpetrator Research, and was coordinator of the Tadamon massacre project.

30th March 2023 13:00-14:00| D422, Newman Building, School of Sociology/ Zoom 

Francesca Lessa |University of Oxford

No Safe Haven: South America’s Operation Condor and Transnational Repression

Abstract: Transnational repression, i.e., the deliberate targeting of refugees and dissidents by states across borders, is a relatively understudied subject in international relations. This article analyzes why and how governments persecute political opponents abroad. It uses the case study of Operation Condor in 1970s South America to derive broader insights to help sharpen our understanding of transnational repression in world politics. I illustrate why and how South American criminal states willingly forewent key aspects of their sovereignty to establish a sophisticated system of cooperation to target dissidents abroad. This scheme was a critical extension of these countries’ domestic-level policies against political opposition and enabled them to target politically active refugees wherever they were located. Exiles were perceived as constituting an existential threat to these autocracies’ survival, given their ability to potentially undermine both their internal and external security, which therefore warranted their elimination. I draw on an interdisciplinary methodology, which combines archival research, interviews, trial ethnography, and the analysis of legal verdicts, alongside conclusions derived from our novel dataset, the Database on South America’s Transnational Human Rights Violations (1969–1981) that comprises 805 victims of transnational repression.

• Francesca Lessa is a lecturer in Latin American studies and development at the University of Oxford. She has a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics. Her work focuses on human rights, accountability, impunity, transitional justice, and Operation Condor with a regional focus on South America. In 2022, Yale University Press published her second monograph, The Condor Trials: Transnational Repression and Human Rights in South America. The Condor Trials won the 2023 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America, sponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center, and received an honourable mention for the 2023 Bryce Wood Book Award of the Latin American Studies Association. Lessa has published widely on transitional justice and human rights in South America in prestigious journals, including Human Rights Quarterly, The Journal of Latin American Studies, The International Journal of Transitional Justice, and The Journal of Human Rights Practice. She is also the honorary president of the Observatorio Luz Ibarburu (Uruguay).

2nd March 2023 13:00-14:00| D422, Newman Building, School of Sociology

Cecília Mendes |University of São Paulo

Decolonial studies in language education. Why does this debate matter?

Cecília Mendes is a doctoral student at the University of São Paulo (USP/ Brazil) in the area of Linguistic and Literary Studies with a governmental grant for occasional research at UCD, in the MA in Race, Migration & Decolonial Studies, in the School of Sociology. She has been a member of the Study Group on Linguistic Education in Foreign Languages in Brazil since 2019. She has worked with English as a foreign language, Portuguese for foreigners, and teacher training, throughout her work in Education in the last 20 years in Brazil. Her doctoral research deals with translanguage and decoloniality from the perspective of language education in English. Her research seminar aims to discuss linguistic diversity in contexts of migratory flows and intends to break with colonial paradigms in language education. This seminar invites us to discuss the new challenges that expressive human mobility poses in the field of language policies and language education in a position that allows important findings for translingual and decolonial language education, with a plurality of languages and subjectivities, from a Global South political reference, a form of resistance, seeking transformative spaces and social justice in the field of Education.

20th January 2022 13:00-14:00 | Zoom Event 

Rik Huizinga, Utrechet University, The Netherlands

Where do I belong?: Lived experiences of young Syrian men in the Netherlands.

Abstract: In this presentation I aim to provide nuanced insights into the everyday experiences and actions of young Syrian male refugees in the Northern Netherlands. In social and political debates, Syrian male identities tend to be reduced to only a few aspects, such as gender, race and religion. Representations of Syrian refugee men in the Netherlands therefore tend to portray them as unwilling, unassimilable or a dangerous Other. Consequently their emotions, inconveniences and vulnerabilities rarely surface, even though men are both the object and the subject of power relations and social violence.

I seek to disrupt these narratives by exploring how young Syrian male refugees establish meaningful and emotional relationships with their everyday environment. I use findings from in-depth and walking interviews to provide a rich illustration of their daily routines and activities, and the opportunities and vulnerabilities they experience as they seek to achieve security, home and belonging. The insights show that Syrian men represent a diverse, complex and dynamic population in contrast to social discourses and political debates. They actively explore and occupy local spaces to find a sense of home and belonging, and demonstrate various strategies to cope with cumulative change in their everyday life. At the same time, they experience slow violence in multiple social domains due to social and institutional marginalisation. The emotional relationships that Syrian men establish and maintain are thus complex, and relate to various times and spaces due to personal biographies, aspirations and desires.

• Rik Huizinga is a social and cultural geographer interested in the intersections of gender, migration and identities. In 2021, he completed a PhD at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His doctoral thesis explores lived experiences of young Syrian refugee men in the Netherlands with a focus on security, home and belonging in the context of social change. Currently, he is working as a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University in the HERA project ‘Refugee Youth in Public Space’, a collaboration between Newcastle University, Institut Universität Bonn, Utrecht University and Université de Liège.

 

3rd February 2022 13:00-14:00 | In-person event with Zoom live broadcast | D422 Newman Building

Ana Liberato, University of Kentucky, USA

Racism and the  Lived Experience of Dominican  Immigrants in  Switzerland

Abstract: Drawing from qualitative research conducted in Switzerland, this study examines first-generation Dominican immigrants’ experiences of racism and their sense of belonging. It examines racist events and interactions and their relationship with the respondents’ sense of identification with Swiss society. The findings suggest going beyond the often-assumed negativerelationship between belonging and everyday racism and paying more attention to mediating micro, meso and macrolevel factors. The study also directs us to pay more attention to majority-minority interactions and the strategies adopted by immigrants in managing intense emotions within specific life realms. Furthermore, our analysis broadens our understanding of these issues in a context located outside of the “metropolis-colony sphere” that’s so commonly represented in the migration literature. It also sheds light on how racism and belonging interact in a context marked by linguistic and cultural diversity, with no institutionalized discourses of race, but that strongly stresses white ethnicity as part of the criteria for belonging.

• Ana S.Q. Liberato was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. She received her master’s in Latin American Studies and doctoral degree in sociology from the University of Florida in 2001 and 2005 respectively. She has a B.S. in Statistics from the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo. Dr. Liberato's interests include race, ethnicity, and gender and their interplay with political identity and political attitudes. Dr. Liberato has a special interest in the cultural and political impacts of migration, and the well-being of immigrant populations. She also has a special interest in the political, cultural, and socioeconomic processes taking place in Caribbean and Latin American societies as a consequence of globalization and democratization.

17th February 2022 13:00-14:00 | Zoom event 

Alejandro Miranda-Nieto, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway

Shared flats in Madrid: Social anchoring and the development of migrants' sense of home

Abstract: Many migrants opt for shared accommodation as a way of coping with the shortage of affordable housing in large cities. As a distinct type of co-housing, flat sharing has been described as one of the many forms of housing precariousness, and even as a type of homelessness. This seminar presents a series of issues arising from an ethnographic study conducted with Peruvian migrants in Madrid. It examines how people anchor a sense of home in the context of transnational migration, and how this process takes place in the context of dwelling in a shared flat. It argues that, while dwelling in a given place and anchoring a sense of home are closely related, they do not always go hand in hand. The (in)congruence between living in a given place and evoking feelings of home partly depends on the role that dwellers play within the shared household and the degrees of control that they have over different settings within the flat. The usage of the domestic space and the ways in which its settings become compartmentalised constitute entry points to the conceptual elaboration of social anchoring and its purchase to understand migrants’ sense of home. 

• Alejandro Miranda-Nieto is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Diversity Studies Centre Oslo, OsloMet. His research focuses on the relationship between social practice and various forms of mobility, dwelling and social change. He is the author of academic articles on migration, mobilities, home, music and ethnography. His monographMusical Mobilitieshas been published in the Routledge Advances in Ethnography series, and the co-authored bookEthnographies of Home and Mobilityin the Routledge Home series.

3rd March 2022 13:00-14:00 | In-person event | D422 Newman Building

Fataneh Farahani, Stockholm University, Sweden

The afterlife of migration: Some reflection over an intellectual and personal journey

Abstract: My main field of study is migration and displacement. For the purpose of this presentation, by reflecting over my personal and intellectual journey (not mutually exclusive entities), I will engage with issues of displacement, otherness, marginality and (be)longing through an intersectional lens.  In sum, I will reflect over following themes.Gendering diaspora studies: By placing gender and sexuality at the centre of my research, I have traced how gender and sexuality are constitutive of migratory processes and vice versa. In doing so, I examine the intersection of the discourses through which (un)desirable femininities and masculinities are constructed in different diasporic spaces. Gendering and racializing knowledge production: Theoretical and methodological attention on overlapping gendered and racialised power relations in which the process of knowledge production is embedded in.  Gendering hospitality: The social values attached to hospitality are highly gendered. By paying specific attention to the gendered aspects of hospitality within the migration context, I highlight both the gendered characteristics of responsibility for hospitable practices as well as how gender inform the (un)deservingness of the displaced subjects.

• Fataneh Farahani is an Associate Professor in Ethnology and Wallenberg Academy fellow at the Department of Ethnology, Gender Studies and History of Religions at Stockholm University. Her publications include: Gender, Sexuality and Diaspora (Routledge, 2018), and articles in the Journal of Sociology, European Journal of Women’s Studies and the Nordic Journal of Migration Research. She is a co-editor of Hospitality and Hostility: The Intimate Life of Borders and Migration at the journal of Sociology (2021) and Artistic and Intellectual Hospitality’ at the Discover Society website (2020).

 

10th March 2022 13:00-14:00 | Zoom event

Vanessa May, University of Manchester, UK

The public sphere as a character in family life: Stretching the boundaries of sociological attention

Abstract: The aim of this talk is to contribute to a reconceptualization of the boundaries of sociological attention regarding where family is enacted by following family life as it is lived across a range of private and public settings. Families tend to be studied as bounded units with an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’, spatially centred in the home. I argue that by conceptualising the public sphere as more than a backdrop to family life and families as more than units populating public spaces, and by empirically capturing a broader set of goings-on as part of family life, we can start to conceive of family life in new ways. My talk will explore two dimensions in particular. First, challenging taken-for-granted ways of thinking about what constitutes the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of family life means systematically exploring how mundane interactions and activities in public settings become part of family life, and how family relationships help constitute these. Second, by conceptualising city spaces as aspects of and even as characters in family life, we can ask how people realise their family capacities in public spaces and how these spaces act in family life. By rethinking the boundaries of sociological attention, such questions can become core to our understanding of how families are constituted and lived. 

• Vanessa, Professor of Sociology, gained her PhD from Abo Akademi University in Finland in 2001. Between 2002-2005 she worked at the Centre for Research on Families, Kinship & Childhood at the University of Leeds. She then joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester in 2005 and is currently the Co-Director of the Morgan Centre for the Research into Everyday Lives and the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sociology.

 

21st April 2022 13:00-14:00 | In-person event | D422 Newman Building

Simon Behrman, Warwick University, UK

The status of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh: Between rights, politics and history

Abstract:  The Rohingya are sometimes referred to as the Jews of the early 21st Century; a persecuted people without a state and at the mercy of a world where statelessness appears to deny them the ‘right to have rights’. Central to their plight is the history of British colonialism, which displaced them for the purpose of ensuring a convenient source of labour, and as part of a divide and rule strategy. This was compounded by the impact of the dissolution of the British Raj along ethno-religious lines. As a result, the Rohingya have found themselves subject to genocidal attacks in Myanmar, and in an often precarious situation in their main country of asylum: Bangladesh. In this talk, I will be presenting this history and outlining some of the legal and political context today that may help or hinder a settlement of the ‘Rohingya Question’. This will draw upon aspects of Bangladeshi and international law and politics.

• Simon studied Law at Birkbeck, University of London, and earned his  PhD there with a thesis on the history of asylum, refugee law and sanctuary movements. Since then Ihe has published widely on these and related themes. In relation to climate refugees in recent years Simon has worked closely with various international organisations such as the International Organisation for Migration, and the Platform for Disaster Displacement, the British Red Cross. Prior to joining Warwick, Simon taught at Birkbeck, University of East Anglia and Royal Holloway. He was a Visiting Lecturer at LUISS in Rome for several years. 

8th December 2022 16:00 | ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2

Katharine Donato| Georgetown University, Washington D.C

Borders, Trajectories and Children: U.S. Integration of Migrant and Refugee Minors

Abstract: This talk is about the management and treatment of immigrants who enter as unaccompanied children (UC). It will chronicle changes in the U.S. government's handling of UC from the past up to present, highlighting three periods: shifts before and after 1980 when the Refugee Act was passed, during the 1980s and 1990s when the U.S. enforcement system began to grow and the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement was procured; and after the events of September 11th, 2001 when two legal statutes -- the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and 2002 Homeland Security Act -- were passed to affect UC treatment and processing. The current system has UC passing through a tangled web of federal, state, and local agencies after they arrive, and their treatment and management starkly contrasts with the values and treatment of the child welfare system. I will also present new findings from 110 UC interviews designed to assess their short- and long-term integration experiences, and then end with a blueprint for systemic reform of the federal and state organizations involved in managing the lives of UC.

• Katharine Donato is the Donald G. Herzberg Professor of International Migration and former Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has examined many research questions related to migration, including the economic consequences of U.S. immigration policy; health consequences of migration; immigrant parent involvement in schools in New York, Chicago, and Nashville; deportation and its effects for immigrants; the great recession and its consequences for Mexican workers; U.S. legal visa system; and refugee and migrant integration. Her first book, Gender and International Migration: From Slavery to Present, was co-authored with Donna Gabaccia and published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2015. Several years later, together with Elizabeth Ferris, she co-authored a second book, Refugees, Migration and Global Governance: Negotiating the Global Compacts, published by Routledge in 2019. Professor Donato has also co-edited 8 refereed journal issues and published more than 90 refereed journal articles and book chapters.

4th November 2021 13:00-14:00 | Zoom event ((opens in a new window)(opens in a new window)register here)

Shiva Bazargan | Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

Intersectionality in law and sociology: where are the gaps?

Abstract: There are two main differences between law and sociology in their approach to understanding and applying intersectionality. The first difference is the understandings of the ‘additive approach’ and how it is different from ‘intersectional approach’. Academic debates in law, treat intersectional approach at a slower pace compared to advances in the field of intersectionality studies in sociology. The second difference is related to law and sociology’s treatment of power as a relational concept. Sociology has dealt with the multiplicity of discrimination and relationality as a core idea of intersectionality in a more constructive, dynamic, and relational way than law. In order to conclude the debate, two important aspects of intersectionality could be strengthened in either discipline in order to reduce these gaps and bring the understanding of intersectionality closer to each other. In particular, paying more attention to ‘privileged positioning’ and focusing on intersectionality as ‘methodology’ would be helpful. 

• Shiva Bazargan (University of Shahid Beheshti) is researching intersectionality theory and its impact on anti-discrimination law with an emphasis on Iranian women. She holds a bachelor's degree in Law from Tabriz University and a master’s degree in Public Law from the University of Shahid Beheshti, Tehran. She was a fellow at University of Amsterdam researching intersectionality literature in European law. 

 

11th November 2021 13:00-14:00 | In-person event with Zoom live broadcast | D422 Newman Building

Iris Wigger | Loughborough University, UK

Challenging Anti-Black racism and white normativity: Postcolonial reflections on Angelo Soliman and our understanding of racism, cultural representation, and Othering

The main aim of this talk is to provide a historically grounded examination of contemporary and historical media representations of Angelo Soliman and demonstrate how a critical Postcolonial reading and analysis of the racist representations ascribed to him during his life as a Black man in 18th century Vienna and after his death can help us to understand the white normative underpinnings/roots and the persistence of anti-Black racism in Modern Europe, investigate it in its historical and contemporary forms, and in relation to media, cultural representations and ‘Othering’. This working paper intends to go beyond being a new interpretation of Soliman and show how this case study has broader implications for our understanding of racism in the Modern world and its link to cultural representation and Othering. 

Soliman was a remarkable black man, who lived in 18th century Vienna, married into the Viennese aristocracy, served as a ‘court moor’ and established himself as a freemason and educator at the Viennese Court. After his death, his body was snatched, and prepped to serve as an exhibit of a ‘primitive savage’ in the Austrian Emperor’s Natural History Collection. The article explores relations between patterns in Soliman’s contemporary representation and his stereotypical racialised portrayal as a ‘moor’ in 18th century Viennese society. It identifies both, continuities in his portrayal as well as more recent attempts to critically question and counter the persistence of racist stereotypical images of Angelo Soliman. 

• Dr Iris Wigger is a sociologist at Loughborough University (LU) and Visiting Assistant Professor in Sociology at UCD. She is the School Co-Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at LU.  Iris Wigger’s research is specializing in issues of 'race' and racism and Intersectionality in European history and contemporary society. She has achieved a record of international excellence across research, teaching and Enterprise/research impact work. Her research output record comprises of high-calibre research papers, books, edited books and research monographs. Iris Wigger is a team-spirited, historically minded and dedicated sociologist with an established, and growing international research trajectory in critical racism analysis, contributing to topical scholarly debates on racism, white normativity and Intersectionality

 

18th November 2021 13:00-14:00 | In-person event with Zoom live broadcast | D422 Newman Building

Aura Lousanma, University of East London, UK

Universities on the border: the politics of higher education and migration

Abstract: Only a minority of refugees, whether settled or in transition, access higher education globally. One of the key barriers is caused by hostile immigration policies, in which universities have become complicit. In addition to policing students’ immigration status, universities create their own bureaucratic barriers to refugee students with high costs, complicated admissions and application processes and the burden of proof regarding language competency and previous learning. When we understand bordering as a process we must also look at universities internal practices, pedagogies and learning environments as part of the cultural and social processes that exclude and discriminate students. Universities are politically situated both due to their relationship with the state, and due to their relationships with staff and students. In this talk I will share experiences of teaching refugee students in the Calais Jungle, in community groups in the UK and at the University of East London. I will also draw from the experiences of a European wide Refugee Education Initiatives project which drew participants from Hungary, Germany, Austria and Greece. Some of the key lessons I have drawn while directing refugee access to HE programs include the importance of navigating and resisting bordering policies within institutions and finding ways to resist them in any of our educational spaces; sharing knowledge across the sector; training staff on trauma-based practice and building anti-racism as central component of all education. To increase refugee societal inclusion and access to higher education we must rethink universities and their role in bordering politics. This will lead into universities to becoming more welcoming environments for all students.

• Aura Lounasmaa is a senior lecturer in Political Science and the director of the Open Learning Initiative (OLIve) course for refugees and asylum seekers at the University of East London. She studied European Economics and Law at UCD and completed her PhD at NUI Galway on Moroccan women’s NGOs’ political and discursive strategies. Her recent publications focus on participatory practices in education and research with refugee learners, ethics of participatory research and barriers to forced migrant inclusion into higher education. She is a co-director of the Association for Narrative Research and Practice.

 

25th November 2021 13:00-14:00 |

Utsa Mukherjee, Brunel University, UK

Diasporic Lived Religion in the Times of COVID-19: The Case of Durga Puja Festivals in Pandemic Britain

Abstract: In this paper, I will use the sociological lens of lived religion to unpack the way diasporic Hindu Bengalis in Britain dealt with the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in staging their autumnal Durga Puja festival which centres around the worship of the goddess Durga. The public health measures introduced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for community groups to host in-person indoor Durga Puja festivities which are pivotal to the social calendar of diasporic Hindu Bengalis. Instead, in the autumn of 2020, many UK-based Durga Puja organisers staged small-scale ritual worship of the goddess in private and then livestreamed it to their members through social media. Based on participant observation of these festival livestreams and remote interviews with Durga Puja organisers from across Britain, I demonstrate that far from being a break with the past these blended Durga Puja festivals built on established templates of mediatisation of religious practices and are part of the wider continuum of adaptations that characterise diasporic lived religion. I also reflect on how internal hierarchies within the diaspora played out vis-à-vis blended Pujas amidst the pandemic.

• Dr Utsa Mukherjee is a Lecturer at Brunel University London. He was previously an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at the University of Southampton. His research interests include migration and diaspora, race, ethnicity and racism, and childhood studies. He is currently the Book Review Co-editor for the journal Children & Society.

 

2nd December 2021 13:00-14:00 

Juan J. Fernández, University Carlos III of Madrid

New Politics and the Long-term Decline in Class Voting in Affluent Democracies, 1956-2018

Description: The role of social class divides in voting choices has long been a central topic in analyses of political behaviour. Many studies examine either empirical patterns of this phenomenon or formulate theoretical causes to account for it. Yet despite extensive work, critical questions remain unanswered such as what socio-economic and political country-level properties help account for the long-term decline in class voting. Using a novel database of 16 affluent democracies covering 1956-2018, this study contributes to this literature with an analysis of long-term changes in class voting. Drawing on the New Politics theory, we argue that the increasing political empowerment of women contributes to the decline in class voting. Since gender-equality issues cut across class issues, they help undermine the salience of class in domestic public spheres. Fixed effects models support our hypothesis. Keeping other things equal, countries that display a stronger increase in women’s political empowerment display a stronger decrease in total class voting. 

• Juan J. Fernández is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences at the University Carlos III of Madrid and member of the Carlos III-Juan March Institute of Social Sciences (IC3JM). His research addresses the relationship between social inequalities, state structures and political conflicts. His research is conducted from a quantitative and comparative perspective and covers four main areas: social policy, political behavior, gender & politics and European integration. He is currently the PI of two projects funded by the Spanish State Research Agency: one regarding the mechanisms of class voting and another one regarding the democratic governance of private pension funds.