City Sociology at the BSA Annual Conference 2016

A number of the Sociology department’s PhD students and senior academics presented papers at the British Sociological Association’s (BSA) Annual Conference 2016 last month at Aston University, Birmingham.

Heated discussions – both inside and outside the plenary and panel sessions – took place not only on this year’s conference theme of ‘Global Societies: Fragmenting and Commenting’ but on the changing nature of the discipline itself within the increasingly ‘massified’ and commercialised UK higher education system.

Rima Saini, 2nd year PhD, presented on the subject of ethnic, religious and national identifications across British South Asian ethno-religious groups in middle-class social locations. Jon Eilenberg, a final year PhD candidate in the department gave a fascinating overview of his methodologies for analysing the media representation of the Mid Staffs hospital scandal. Aysegul Kesimoglu discussed her paper on negotiations of identity as perceived through food preferences and consumption, with the focus on Turkish society.

Our senior academic presence at the conference consisted of a number of leading members of staff including Carolina Matos, Dan Marcea, Rachel Cohen and Simon Susen. Presentations on themes ranging from the role of social media in Diasporic environmental protest, to Goffman’s theory of the self, to the meanings attached to work in the classic car restoration industry impressed across the board.