Everyday Life and Critical Diversities
Micro social life and social diversity seem banal and commonplace yet they are the social we all inhabit and most regularly experience, and it is this that makes them important.
Current themes include:
- Place and space
- Migration
- Families and relationships
- Care and caring
- Critical ‘communities’
- Brexit
- Race and racism
- Researching the everyday
- Social theory
- The non-everyday
- Belonging and non-belonging
- Gender and sexuality
Some of the questions we are currently grappling with include:
- How can we access everyday understandings of the social world in our research?
- How can we understand experiences of race and ethnicity, health, gender, class and migration in our research?
- How can we theorise everyday life and critical diversities?
- How are politics and policies experienced in people’s everyday lives?
For more information on our work in Everyday Life and Critical Diversities, please contact Dr Julie Walsh at j.c.walsh@sheffield.ac.uk or Dr Briony Hannell at B.Hannell@sheffield.ac.uk
The Everyday Life and Critical Diversities blog posts
Keep up with news and events from the Everyday Life and Critical Diversities theme via the Sociological Studies Research blog. Look for posts tagged with The Everyday Life and Critical Diversities.
Upcoming workshops, lectures and events
Grief Interrupted- Exploring British Muslim Communities practices of burial and commemoration during Covid 19
15 November 2023
Dr Rashida Bibi will consider the impact of Covid 19 on British Muslim communities through a phenomenological and socio-cultural lens and discuss ways in which certain religious and cultural practices inherent to the Muslim faith, including washing and shrouding of the deceased, were affected by Covid 19.
Past workshops, lectures and events
The Racialised Representation and Monetisation of Children: US Adoption Practices in Digital Context
11 October 2023
Isabelle Higgins presented findings from three years of digital ethnographic research examining the use of digital technologies to represent and monetise children deemed eligible for adoption into families in the USA.
Researching with vulnerable populations and poor communities: Lessons from both the Global North and Global South (Decolonising Sociology Seminar Series)
14 June 2023
Dr Roda Madziva (University of Nottingham) drew upon her experience of conducting migration research in both the Global South and Global North. She discussed the need to work ‘with’ communities, offering a critical interrogation of enduring dominant colonialist assumptions underpinning notions of ‘harm’, ‘giving a voice’ and ‘capacity building’.
Beyond Resistance and Resignation: On the Cultivation of Algocratic Attunement in China in the COVID Era
13 June 2023
In this seminar co-hosted with STeMiS, Dr Sheng Zou (Hong Kong Baptist University) presented his recent work on user dispositions and responses to algorithmic governance and algorithmic technologies during the Covid-19 pandemic in China.
Mediated Reproduction: Understanding informal donor conception in the digital age
7 June 2023
In this introductory seminar co-hosted with STeMiS, Dr Leah Gilman introduced the work she will be undertaking, on digitally-mediated informal donor conception (DMIDC) facilitated by online platforms and social media groups, as a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in the department.
Decolonising knowledge production on South-South migration (Decolonising Sociology Seminar Series)
24 May 2023
Professor Mary Boatemaa Setrana (University of Ghana) spoke about her collaborative work with the UKRI-funded Centre for Migration for Development and Equality, interrogated colonial legacies and inequalities in knowledge production, and problematised normative assumptions about the production of knowledge on south-south migration. Drawing upon her own experiences in the field, she positioned oral histories, indigenous knowledge systems, and the creative arts as particularly useful epistemological and methodological approaches to decolonising knowledge dynamics in and from the Global South.
Transatlantic Liverpool: Shades of the Black Atlantic (Decolonising Sociology Seminar Series)
10 May 2023
Professor Mark Christian (Lehman College, City University of New York) discussed his most recent book, Transatlantic Liverpool: Shades of the Black Atlantic (2022, Lexington). Transatlantic Liverpool combines a semi-autoethnographic approach based on Christian’s Black Liverpool heritage and Paul Gilroy’s notion of the Black Atlantic to offer an analysis of Liverpool’s Black history.
COVID Labour: Making a ‘livable’ life under lockdown
25 January 2023
Dr Katherine Twamley (UCL Social Research Institute) presented a paper drawing upon qualitative longitudinal data from 38 families with children in the UK between May 2020 and June 2021. Dr Harrie Churchill and Dr Katherine Davies joined as discussants.
Decolonising Sociology discussion
16 November 2022
Dr Briony Hannell, Dr Joanne Britton, and Dr Julie Walsh hosted a discussion of Ali Meghji’s Decolonizing Sociology (2020, Polity Press).
An Innocuous Quote by Interviewee 11: The Project of Knowing in Research with Young Migrants
6 April 2022
In this seminar co-hosted with the Sheffield Migration Research Group, Dr Shamser Sinha (University of Suffolk) presented work from his forthcoming book, Decolonising Social Enquiry: Moving Beyond Mind/Body Dualism, reflecting on the sociologist’s responsibility to develop ways of doing sociology that do not strip the humanity from research participants. He proposed a sociology informed by thinking with our senses, rather than in isolation from them, emphasising the importance of the temporary and sensory context of shared dialogue between the researcher and research participants. Dr Thea Shahrokh and Dr Katherine Davies joined as discussants.
Changing Pace: Sociological walking during the Covid-19 pandemic
21 June 2021
Dr Adam Carter and Dr Lauren White reflect on how to capture, discuss, and analyse walking and our everyday mobilities a year after the first Covid-19 lockdown.
Mundane Methods: Innovative Ways to Research the Everyday
20 January 2021, 2pm - 4pm
Dr Sarah Marie Hall (University of Manchester), Dr Helen Holmes (University of Manchester), Dr Morag Rose (University of Liverpool) and Dr Rebecca Collins (University of Chester) discussed their new book, published by Manchester University Press in 2020.
Everyday Life and Critical Diversities Seminar
16 May 2019, 2:00pm - 4:00pm, Elmfield, G19
Talks from Julie Walsh, Helen Kennedy and Robin Walsh about papers and bid ideas they are working on:
- Julie Walsh: 'Everyday Bordering in the UK: the impact on social care practitioners and the migrant families with whom they work'.
- Helen Kennedy: 'Approaching public perceptions of datafication through the lens of inequality'.
- Robin Sen: 'Parental views of successful reunification'.
‘These are a few of my favourite things’: Material Culture in the Everyday
1 March 2019
- BSA Postgraduate Forum Regional Event organised by Laura Towers and Lauren White
Theorising Everyday Life and Critical Diversities
12 December 2018
- Talks from Dr Matthias Benzer, Dr Alex Dennis and Dr Katherine Davies
Researching the everyday
7 November 2018
- ‘Documenting Daily Life with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS): Reflections from the Diary Method Approach’ - Lauren White
- 'Engaging material methods to explore everyday health practices' - Dr Ros Williams and Dr Kate Weiner
What we’ve been up to over summer
12 September 2018
- ‘Say Cheese: exploring practices of smiling’ - Dr Lorna Warren
- ‘Neighbours – more than just good friends: Understanding the neighbour as a contemporary socio-spatial relationship' - Professor Sarah Neal
- '“No one learned”: Interpretations of a police crackdown operation and its consequences' - Dr Will Mason
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