School of Social and Political Science

Description

The new ‘Theory in Sociology’ seminar series, hosted within CRITIQUE (The SPS based Centre for Ethics and Critical Thought), will be launched on Friday 13 October (11am -12:45pm), with a Panel discussion on ‘Theorising the Digital’, featuring Dr Liz McFall, Dr Karen Gregory and Dr Ben Collier.

The panel will present and discuss the theories which each of the speakers respectively draws on to think with in their empirical research about the digital. The seminar is thus meant to stimulate our own reflection about how we think and work through our data with theory. It is open to both research students and staff, and is the first of three for this academic year. This one has the particularity of being embedded in a day-long workshop for postgraduate research students.

If you are a postgraduate research student and want to find out about the day-long event and register for it, please consult the BSA page: From Data to Theory: Theorising at the intersection of digital sociology, economic sociology and STS (britsoc.co.uk). Otherwise, register through the Eventbrite.

The event is organised by Isabelle Darmon, Stephen Kemp, Elif Buse Doyuran, Joe Noteboom and Ari Stillman.

The panel features contributions from SPS' Dr Ben Collier, Dr Karen Gregory and Dr Liz McFall, who will speak to the different ways their research is informed by theoretical concerns. The titles of their presentations are as follows:

• Dr Liz McFall (Sociology): ‘#CovidArcadia: taking Walter Benjamin to a pragmatist STS account of market action.’
• Dr Karen Gregory (Sociology): ‘Tarot as Care Work: Using Marxist Feminism and Ethnography to Understand Spiritual Entrepreneurialism Online’
• Dr Ben Collier (STIS): ‘Navigating theory-methods in the study of digital infrastructures’

Each panellist will speak for around 20 minutes, and there will be plenty of time for comments and questions from the audience afterwards.