The Sociology Department's research takes place within the university's Faculty of Social Sciences which has a thriving research culture and is engaged in world-class, agenda setting research in fields such as human geography, culture, citizenship, identities, governance, criminology and international development and innovation.

The Faculty houses one of the strongest concentrations of sociology researchers in the country and internationally with a shared focus on the role played by culture, values, and beliefs in the way in which social life is organised. This research is organised into three main themes. The theme of Identities is broadly concerned with the social and psychological factors shaping identities (ethnic, sexual, generational, etc) and the relations between them. The theme Citizenship and Governance is concerned not only with formal civic duties and entitlements, but also with the ways in which citizenship is socially defined and enacted. Governance is similarly broadly interpreted to include the social and cultural regulation of behaviour as well as political governance. The third theme Culture, Media and the Social focuses on the relations between cultural and media practices and institutions, and their governance, and the roles that they play – through the texts they produce and circulate and the ways in which these are received - in relation to various aspects of the organisation of social life. This research is developed primarily in the context of two world-class research centres - ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change and the University Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance – with additional significant input from the ESRC Research Programme on Identities and Social Action and the International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research. Our research work also takes place within the Pavis Centre for Social and Cultural Research.

Our research signature is based on transdisciplinary approaches to timely interdisciplinary areas and is demonstrated through our preparations for the 2008 RAE, where the Faculty is building on the synergistic strengths of our Research Centres to administer submissions to two Units of Assessment: Sociology and Geography. The former includes active researchers drawn from across the Faculty.