Sociology and Criminology

Knowledge is a central feature of contemporary economies, societies and personal lives. Our scholars embrace cutting-edge approaches to knowledge, including southern theory, world society theory and Legitimation Code Theory, that represent a unique combination of insights within one department. Studies cover a distinctively broad range of areas, from school classrooms to disciplinary history, from global flows of knowledge to local interactions between individuals. Work in this theme has been recognised within and beyond the University with the award of a SOAR fellowship, the LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building, and an ARC Discovery Grant focused on Knowledge-Making in Australian Society: Sociology and it's Social Impact.

Key researchers

Karl Maton, Fran Collyer, Salvatore Babones, Dr Ben Manning, Dr Leah Williams Veazey, Sharon Aris (HDR), Elena Lambrinos (HDR), Patrick Locke (HDR), Mauricio Quilpatay (HDR), Saul Richardson (HDR), Mathew Toll (HDR), Zhigang Yu (HDR), Rurong Le (HDR).

Resources

- Knowledge and Global Power: Making New Sciences in the South

Brings together key scholars who investigate death and trauma arising from physical and structural violence, focusing on questions such as:

• How to decolonise the ways in which historical and contemporary death and trauma of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are constructed by the state?
• How to investigate methodologies recover and recognise victims– e.g the exhumation of the disappeared, commissions of inquiry into institutional abuse?
• How has transitional justice approached death and trauma as the legacy of violence in contemporary post-authoritarian societies and in historical settler societies?
• How do issues of class, sexuality, gender, disability and race shape understandings of trauma, reparations and justice?

Key researchers

Catriona Elder, Robert van Krieken, Michael Humphrey, Sonja van Wichelen, Rebecca Bray, Greg Martin, Fiona Gill, Allen George, Karen O’Brien, Danielle Celermajer and Estrella Pearce.

Resources

• Legitimating Life: Adoption in the Age of Globalization and Biotechnology
• The Ecology of Torture (podcast)

People today face conflicting demands to “be themselves” in a cosmopolitan and hyper-public, mediatized world. Within instituted hierarchies and social networks, dialectics of control permeate struggles for authenticity and autonomy and attempts to form meaningful relationships with others. Our research explores these paradoxes of authenticity and community, their impact on the emotions and capacity for intimacy, and the broader implications for personal freedom, social imaginaries, and global modernity. 

Key researchers

Craig Browne, Jennifer Wilkinson, Salvatore Babones, Karen O’Brien and Tim Soutphommasame.

Resources

• On Hate
• The Public Life of Friendship
• The Larrakia Petitions for a Treaty and Land Rights

Drawing from emerging fields such as science and technology studies, animal studies, posthumanism, environmental humanities, new materialism and critical race studies, our researchers seeks to reconceptualise societies in ways that focus attention on the social, political and economic dynamics of life (human and non-human), networks, technologies and environment, and to questions of justice amongst them. This grouping involves scholars engaged in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences FutureFix BioHumanity and Multispecies Justice research themes. In addition, scholars involved in Posthuman Socialities convene the Biopolitics of Science Research Network and the Human Animal Research Network. 

Key researchers

David Bray, Dinesh Wadiwel, Danielle Celermajer, Nadine Ehlers, Sonja van Wichelen

Resources

• Deadly Biocultures: The Ethics of Life-making

Examines the logics of asset-based capitalism and investigates the new forms of inequality and precarity accompanying its rise. It looks at everything from the high rentier economies of energy monopolies, urban infrastructure booms and intellectual property regimes, to the everyday rentierism of negatively geared investors and the work/rentier hybrids represented by Airbnb hosts and uber drivers. The theme involves scholars engaged in the FASS FutureFix Asset Ownership and New Forms of Inequality research theme and the Collaborative Research Support Initiative on Energy It's Institutions, Networks and Lived Experiences.

Key researchers

Melinda Cooper, Amanda Elliot, Michael Humphrey, Lisa Adkins, Monique Mackenzie (HDR), Greta Werner (HDR) and Carolyn Vaughn Brennan (HDR)

Resources

• The Time of Money
• Capital and Time

The Sydney Environment Institute is a national and world leader in multidisciplinary environmental research, extending and amplifying the scope of the engagement on environmental issues; and bringing together expertise from across disciplines to address key environmental problems in favour of the public good.

The LCT Centre for Knowledge-Building has built a framework for the study of knowledge and education to analyse a growing range of practices across education, law, politics, art, and public understandings of science.

The Sydney Peace Foundation awards the annual Sydney Peace Prize – Australia's only international prize for peace. Previous recipients include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Naomi Klein, Professor Noam Chomsky, the founders of Black Lives Matter, Patrick Dodson and Joseph Stiglitz.

The Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies harnesses social science and humanities expertise to understand and transform how health and social life intersect on our changing planet.