UCL Sociology Network – Events

11 December 2025. Professor Les Back, University of Glasgow, President of the British Sociological Association 2026, with discussant Professor Ann Phoenix, Social Research Institute, UCL

Home is a knife-edge word. Competing forces balance on its edge, which either control or open the terms of belonging.  It is why home is paradoxical. The concept of home, or the sense of belonging that it evokes, is compelling because it anchors our experience of social life. For a long time, Les has been drawn to the idea of home because it connects us to place and people, and that sense of being part of the social world. That's why he finds home a very rich idea sociologically, and this lecture outlined why. 

No video recording is available for this lecture.

3 June 2025. Musa al-Gharbi, assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University, with discussant, Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya, Sarah Parker Remond Centre, UCL.

Society has never been more egalitarian – in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued.  At the same time, social and economic inequality has exploded. In his latest book, We Have Never Been Woke, Musa argued that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite – the symbolic capitalists.

• Watch the debate: We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite

6 June 2024. Professor Sylvia Walby (Royal Holloway); Professor Lucinda Platt (LSE); Professor Ali Meghji (Cambridge); Professor Sam Friedman (LSE).
 
As wars rage and the climate crisis looms, what can sociology offer? Four eminent sociologists tackled this question, drawing on their own expertise and experience to consider how our discipline can be relevant in times of crisis. 

• Watch the debate: How Can Sociology Engage with the Major Challenges of Our Time?

21 June 2023. Professor Will Atkinson, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol.
 
In this lecture, Will probed the relationship between fundamental features of the human condition and modes of social division and domination.  He set out several premises about what it means to be human and, from that, established misrecognition as the key to understanding division and domination. 

• Watch the lecture: The Roots of All Capitals, or, the Human Condition and Social Division

30 March 2022. Professor Gurminder K Bhambra, FBA (University of Sussex / President, British Sociological Association 2022).

In this lecture, Gurminder discussed the conceptual architecture of sociology that has been bequeathed to us via a focus on the foundational generation and argued for the need to reconstruct it through an address of the broader, shared histories that have produced our present.

•  Watch the lecture: Contemporary Sociology and the Reconstruction of its Canons

• Artificial Intelligence in qualitative sociological research: strategies, tactics and ethics, with Dr Christine Silver, University of Surrey. Recent years have seen increasing discussion about the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in qualitative research, spurred by widespread access to Generative-AI (GenAI) technologies, especially Large Language Models (LLMs) and chatbots such as ChatGPT. This workshop discussed the rise of AI in qualitative research, outlining implications for the whole research cycle, and focusing in particular on data preparation and analysis tools.
• Methods Beyond the Interview, with Dr Ben Abrams and Prof Fiona Stevenson, UCL.  This workshop explored alternative approaches, with an overview of research using data archives and open-source methods and a short presentation on observational research and conversation analysis.  

• Sociological perspectives on generations and generational change, with Prof. Chris Gilleard and Prof. David Voas, UCL. This workshop explored the relevance of generations as a key concept in the sociological toolkit for understanding how contemporary societies change. This includes issues such as declining levels of religiosity, attitudes to climate change, views of gender roles, as well as the salience of generations for identity, sometimes leading to conflicts or tensions, such as that between “boomers” and “millennials”.
• A Good Story, Well Told: Utilising Digital Storytelling in Qualitative Research, with Mike Lang. Digital Storytelling (DST) is a facilitated, autobiographical media production methodology where a participant creates their own short film (2-5 mins in length) about an important moment in their life using voiceover narration, photos, videos, music and various video editing techniques. These short films are called “Digital Stories” and are generally between 2 and 5 minutes in length. This small group workshop provided an overview of DST Methodology, shared examples and explored how qualitative researchers could incorporate DST into their work.

• 25 March 2025. Book launch of Rachel Benchekroun’s Precarious Motherhood – Navigating relationships and support post-migration in the UK. Precarious Motherhood explores the experiences of racially minoritised mothers living with insecure immigration status and financial hardship in London, UK. It exposes the impact of hostile immigration policies and precarity on mothers’ interpersonal relationships and access to support.  
• 26 November 2024. Book launch of Katherine Twamley's Caring is Sharing? Caring is Sharing? explores why and how mixed-sex couples make decisions around parental leave at the transition to parenthood, and how these decisions shape their work and family care practices during and after the leave period.