Faculty of Social Sciences
Research
Research projects
Major research projects
Faculty research projects
Enduring Love?
The research project Enduring Love? Couple Relationships in the 21st Century is a mixed methods study on long-term adult couple relationships. The findings will add an important dimension to understandings of personal and family lives in contemporary society. Increasing knowledge on how long-term relationships work and the emotional and practical relationship work that goes into sustaining them, will facilitate more effective points of intervention, informing the improvement of policy making, governance and support services, and relationship education.
Architectural Atmospheres: The impact of digital technologies on architectural design practice
The Economic and Social Research CouncilI has awarded a research grant to Prof Gillian Rose (Geography, Open University) and Dr Monica Degen (Sociology, Brunel University). The project 'Architectural Atmospheres: The impact of digital technologies on architectural design practice' will run from 1 October 2011 to 30 September 2013.
In recent years, architects have made increasing use of digital visualising technologies in both their design work and in how they present their projects to clients and take them through the planning process. This project will work with two architectural studios in London to study just how those technologies are being used, what difference they are making to how architects work and how their designs are then seen by planners and other urban policymakers.
For more information, please contact Gillian Rose.
Black British Jazz
The research project What is Black British Jazz? Routes Ownership Performance (BBJ) explores the emergence of a distinct tradition within British music. BBJ melds reggae, hiphop, African music and US jazz into a rich, and constantly developing set of sounds. In documenting this musical hybrid, the project touches on important issues for the study of music – the transmission of cultural values, the social context of musical forms, and frameworks of ownership that impact on musical communities.
The research takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together researchers with specialism’s in sociology, music psychology and (ethno) musicolology. And it integrates a range of methods, from detailed analysis of performance through to ethnographic and historical investigation.
The project approaches BBJ via three research strands: Routes, Ownership and Performance. These strands act as guides for our work but as the project develops we will also be looking for ways of integrating them and highlighting common themes.
Andean Waterscapes
The research project The Political Ecology of Extractive Industries and Changing Waterscapes in the Andes aims to explore changes to lives, livelihoods and landscapes arising from the increased demand for fresh water resources by the expanding mining industry in the Andean region.
Meeting growing demand for water for mining is a key challenge because natural supplies are limited, most existing resources are in use and some sources are considered as sacred among indigenous people. The existing literature suggests that increased water demand for mining may put pressure on water sources used by Quechua and Aymara people for their basic needs, income-generating activities and customs; lead to the depletion, and contamination, of water sources far from the mines; result in the proposition of schemes to build large-scale hydraulic infrastructure to increase storage and transfers of water; influence political debates and proposals to reform legislation in order to address growing competition over water resources; and contribute to growing social tensions and conflicts over the use and governance of water resources.
Collaboratory in Critical Security Studies
The International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies (ICCM) considers critical research and critical methodology in conjunction, as mutually dependent rather than as isolated entities. The Collaboratory is an ESRC-funded virtual research environment for investigating the potential of critical methods for security studies and a space for collaboration and collective writing. As a web-based research environment, the Collaboratory aims to build a capacity for recurrent and sustainable research exchange and knowledge creation.
Postgraduate research is largely focused on a toolbox of methods that students mix and match depending on their particular disciplines (for example, discourse analysis or ethnographic research). Methods are generally taken to be of a limited number and transferable from one field to another and, to a certain extent, from one theory to another. The Collaboratory aims to inquire into the problems that arise out of existing assumptions of transferability, consider the nuanced ways in which methodological developments in other areas can be ‘translated’ in critical security studies and interrogate how methods - in close connection with theoretical apparatuses and conceptual toolboxes - can have critical purchase.
Identities and Social Action
Identities and Social Action is a five year research programme funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The programme runs from 2004 to 2008 and is directed by Professor Margaret Wetherell, Open University. The ESRC has invested £4 million in 25 research projects based in universities around the UK. These projects will deepen our understanding of the processes involved in the making of selves, groups and communities.
- How do people construct a sense of identity these days?
- What are the consequences of the identity paths chosen?
- How do identity choices intensify or ease social conflict?
- What is it like to build an identity in situations of social exclusion?
The programme focuses on the attempts of people with very different trajectories and from very different contexts to build communities and 'liveable lives'.