Work In Progress seminar - Weds 3rd Nov, 4-5.30pm

We are delighted to host the first of this year's Work In Progress seminars on Weds 3rd November (4 - 5.30pm). These seminars are an opportunity to present any paper or funding bid that you are working on in order to get supportive and constructive feedback. For this seminar, we are delighted to welcome Dr Greg Hollin (University of Leeds) and Dr Ros Williams (University of Sheffield), who will be talking about their ongoing work on complicity. Please see the abstract below for details. The event will be held on Zoom and you can find the link at the bottom of this post. There's no need to register - all are welcome.

Work in Progress: Complicity: Methodologies of power, politics, and the ethics of knowledge production

Ros Williams & Greg Hollin

Sociologists might believe themselves complicit in myriad ways: before research begins, the practical matter of access and locating a “study-able” field may mean that certain groups are over-researched and surveilled while others remain excluded and pass without notice. Confronted by what Marres describes as the ‘privatisation of social research,’ a researcher interested in the discussion on social media might have to purchase the very data they look to analyse, with grant money paid to the social media companies around which the age of ‘platform capitalism’ has emerged. The complex of complicities doesn’t end at data collection, of course: apparently critical or ethical analyses of emerging technologies may, ironically, end up reinforcing dominant framings or we might forsake theoretical depth and empirical nuance in the name of stakeholder relevancy. Working with ‘complicity’ as a broad, explorative heuristic for thinking through the methodological politics of contemporary sociological research, and through a forthcoming edited collection entitled Confronting Complicities (SHI Monograph Series), we have sought to explore the diverse ways in which sociologists might engage in, and respond to, forms of complicity. In this work in progress, and prior to a group discussion of the topic, we detail first, how we came to explore ‘complicity’; second, existing approaches to the topic; and third, some of the contributions to the collection.

Greg Hollin is a Welcome Trust Research Fellow in the Social Sciences and Humanities, based at the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds. His research concerns links between concussion, dementia, and sport.

Ros Williams is based at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Sociological Studies, undertaking a Welcome Trust Research Fellowship in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Her work explores intersections between ideas of ‘race’, biomedicine, and media.

To join, please follow the link below:

https://universityofleeds.zoom.us/j/81938838196?pwd=UjJpa0FPQUFTdWxNWmQzQ1owb3FBQT09

Meeting ID: 819 3883 8196

Passcode: jE.5YT