Our Seminar Series
The Department of Sociology & Criminology hosts a regular seminar series. This is a time for all of us (Staff and Postgrads) to come together and share our work and ideas with one another. We want to create a positive and encouraging atmosphere so that we can have some fruitful exchanges and really learn about what each of us are working on to create and contribute to an ongoing conversation. Seminars also help to establish good professional links and contacts, and just generally facilitate our department’s research community.
The seminars are open to all interested staff and postgraduate students from other departments in the university, and beyond.
2023-2024 Seminars
Next Up:
15th March, 12-1pm, Askive G01, Dr Nasrin Khandoker, Department of Sociology and Criminology, UCC
Title: Songs of Desire and Defiance: Subjectivity, Emotions and Authenticity in Bhawaiya Folk Songs of North Bengal.
Bhawaiya is one of the most popular folk song genres among Bengalis. While all Bangla folk songs express the emotions and the stories of the most marginal people, Bhawaiya is significant for expressing the female passion grounded in day-to-day material reality through the stories of the female subject of the songs. The passionate lyrics of Bhawaiya, when expressing love and desire for a woman’s lover, are not always bound to marital or ‘legitimate’ sexual relations. In this research, through the lens of these songs, I located those desires that often seem deviant but can defy normative control by constructing female subversive subjectivities. Through my ethnographical research of the ‘Bhawaiya people’, such as singers, producers, and researchers in the main Bhawaiya areas, I see how those emotions are evoked through performances and how they make connections between the performers and the listeners. Through these songs, I examined the subversive possibilities within Bangla folk songs for the people on the margins, tracing the construction of the perils and pleasures of sexual subjectivity through a variety of Bangla social-cultural fields.
8th May, 12-1.30pm, Askive G01, Dr Greg Hollin, University of Sheffield
Title: Mice, men, and mountain goats: Interspecies relations in the study of brain-injury induced dementias.
The last two decades have seen increasing recognition that concussion and other forms of traumatic brain injury may constitute risk factors for Alzheimer’s-like dementias. Unsurprisingly, one consequence of the contemporary ‘concussion crisis’ is the increasing use of animal models aimed at better understanding the neurodegenerative effects of brain injury in humans. In order to better comprehend this emerging field of research, in this presentation I draw upon my observations and interviews with scientists undertaking pre-clinical research and studying brain injury in animals. Following queer theorist Mel Chen, my particular approach is to understand “animality” and “humanity” less as essences that are intrinsically attached to particular species (a mouse, a sheep, a human), than as “sticky” concepts that may-or-may-not be bound to particular bodies. In other words, I seek explore the presence of the human in the animal, and the animal in the human. Based upon my ethnographic work, I suggest that “the human” is ever present in these animal laboratories, not only as an imagined end-point beneficiary of research, but also in the body of a mouse that staggers under a concussive blow, the neuropathological brain slice of a bovine studied under a microscope, and in laboratory protocols stressing a commitment to social justice. I focus in particular upon the raced and gendered implications of these interspecies entanglements, suggesting that while scientists are committed in their progressive political and research agenda, there remain troubling resonances in this particular transposition of human and animal.
Previous Seminars 2023-2024
28th November, 12-2, Safari G01, Professor Nicola Ingram, School of Education, UCC
Title: THE DEGREE GENERATION: THE MAKING OF UNEQUAL GRADUATE LIVES
Abstract: This seminar draws on a recent book which traces the transition to the graduate labour market of a cohort of middle-class and working-class young people who were tracked over seven years through their undergraduate and post-graduation lives in the UK. Its aim is to provide insights into the ways in which the dominant policy goals of social mobility and graduate employability are experienced by young people themselves. The book traces the unfolding of their young graduate lives, through analysis of a unique longitudinal qualitative data set gathered over a seven-year period. Using personal narratives and voices, it provides in-depth insights into the group’s experience of graduate employment and shows how life-course transitions are shaped by social background and education. Critically evaluating current government and university policies, the book explores the attitudes and values of this generation, their hopes and aspirations with regard to employment and their futures as graduates in a challenging socio-economic context.
24th November, 10-12, Askive G01, Professor Nicola Carr, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham
TIME, PUNISHMENT AND PROBATION
Time is a strangely neglected aspect in the study of punishment, despite its centrality to many philosophies of punishment, the imposition of criminal sanctions and the experiences of people subject to punishment. This presentation explores how the subject of time has featured across different criminological literature. This includes as as a structuring logic for punishment, and as a feature of the carceral experience. Looking beyond the prison, the presentation will also explore temporal aspects of community sanctions and measures through a focus on an empirical study of the use of pre-sentence reports in the Irish criminal justice system. Using the frame of the chronotope it will explore how the use of pre-sentence reports shifts the spatio-temporal logics of the court process towards a different sphere of governance.
Bio
Nicola Carr is a Professor of Criminology in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. She has recently co-edited (with Gwen Robinson) a book on Time and Punishment – New Contexts and Perspectives published by Palgrave. She is a Visiting Professor at the Department of Sociology and Criminology, UCC in Autumn 2023.
14th November, 12-2, Safari G01, Professor Louise Ryan, London Met University
Title: NAVIGATING THE HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT - AFGHAN EVACUEES IN LONDON
Following the dramatic evacuation from Kabul airport in August 2021, the British government proclaimed its commitment to a 'warm welcome' for Afghans. This paper draws on original qualitative research to explore the emerging experiences of evacuees, and other recent arrivals, during their first year in London. Using the narratives of our Afghans participants, as well as insights from key stakeholders, we show how they navigated slow, opaque bureaucratic processes and lack of communication with official agencies. As a result of these lengthy processes, many thousands of evacuees remained in temporary hotel accommodation for 2 years. The paper argues that the ad hoc response of the Home Office and the Foreign Office has created ‘false distinctions’ between categories of Afghan refugees, reinforcing notions of 'deserving' versus 'underserving' migrants. This distinction allows the British government to present itself as humanitarian, 'rescuing' people from Afghanistan, while simultaneously maintaining its commitment to the 'hostile immigration environment'.
This event is organised in collaboration with ISS21 https://www.ucc.ie/en/iss21/
Belonging and Narrative Symposium, ORB G027, 1-4pm, Sept 20th 2023.
- Professor Molly Andrews, UCL
- Professor Nira Yuval-Davis, UEL
- Professor Maggie O'Neill, UCC
- Dr Caitriona Ní Laoire, UCC
- Dr Ulrike M Vieten, Queens Belfast
- Dr Mastoureh Fathi, UCC
Programme available to download here: Programme for our Sociology Symposium Sept 20th 2023
2022-2023 Series
March 7th 2023
Dr John O'Brien, UCC: The Belfast Rape Trial: A forensic sociological analysis
Grit Hoppener (UCC)
February 22nd 2023
Dr Ulrike M Vieten, Queen's University Belfast, presented 'The Normalization of colonial continuity: anti-migration discourse and gender toxicology'
January 18th 2023
Dr Simone Varriale, Loughborough University gave a talk entitled Changing imaginaries of unequal EU migrations
The paper draws on a larger book project, titled Coloniality and Meritocracy in Unequal EU Migrations (Bristol University Press, 2013). The book is based on 57 biographical interviews with working-class and middle-class, White and Black Italian migrants, and with both migrant women and men.
November 16th 2022
Professor Brenda Murphy, University of Malta and UCC, gave a talk entitled Boundaried spaces and the pursuit of happiness feminist practices: from academy to activism.
2021-2022 Series
June 2nd 2022
Dr David Honeywell
Life After Prison: Liminality, identity and who gets to decide how 'moving on' looks like.
See our news item here for info and RSVP detail:
May 25th 2022
Book launch of Criminal Women - Gender Matters
See this listed in our news item https://www.ucc.ie/en/sociology/news/book-launch-criminal-women-gender-matters.html
May 9th 2022
Professor Gary Craig
The Racist Tail Wags the Welfare Dog
April 6th 2022
Diana Stypinska, NUIG
The pantomime of critique: On decadent indignation and the (im)possibilty of radical social change.
February 28th 2022
Lorraine Bowman Grieve (WIT)
Researching the Radical Right online: Stormfront and the Women's Forum
February 21st 2022
Professor Louise Ryan
Is it who you know?
Exploring the direct and indirect roles of social migrants' accessing labour markets
2020-2021 Series
29th March 2021
Professor Pádraig Carmody and Dr. Su-Ming Khoo
Revisiting Development Theories
24th November 2020
Dr Ebun Joseph, Ismail Einashe, Dr Jacqui O'Riordan and Dr Mike FitxGibbon
Migration, Race & Ethnicity
8th October 2020
Professor Ursula Kilkelly
Transforming Youth Detention: the Oberstown story? Making rights real in youth detention
2019-2020 Series
10th October 2019
Professor David Wall
‘Cybercrime Kingpins: The changing division of criminal labour within the modern cybercrime ecosystem’
19th November 2019
Dr Annie Cummins
‘Understanding the nature of play in after-school settings in Ireland’
3rd December 2019
Dr Tom Boland
‘Governing the labour market in the cargo-cult for full employment’
21st January 2020
Professor Louise Ryan
‘“Kilburn is not Kilburn any more”: an analysis of ageing in and out of place’
28th January 2020
Professor Arpad Szakolczai (UCC)
‘From Baudelaire through Picasso to Sartre: Scenes from the lives of the demonic avant-garde’
11th February 2020
Dr Richard Milner (UCC)
‘Narratives and Collective Learning Processes: how society makes sense of and responds to crises’
20th February 2020
Dr Aine Mangaoang (University of Oslo) and Dr Tom Western (University of Oslo and University of Oxford) ISS21 joint seminar with the School of Applied Social Studies.
"Music, Sound, and Power in contemporary places of detention"