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Department of Sociology

 

The Sociology Blog features articles from students and staff to promote research and share reflections on life and study in Cambridge.

If you have content that you would like to have featured, please contact communications@sociology.cam.ac.uk. All content must conform to our Digital Editorial Guidelines.


 

‘If you don’t gamble, you’ll never win’: An exploration of the similarities between gambling and IVF

Lorelei Booth is a third year HSPS undergraduate studying sociology and politics at Hughes Hall. She has particularly enjoyed the Sociology of Gender paper and was inspired to write this article by Professor Sarah Franklin’s lectures on reproduction.

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Boats, Boundaries & Belonging: A Reading of Conservative Anti-Migration Campaigns Through the Gendered Grammar of the Home

Caitlin Rajan shows how gendered ideas of the home and domesticity are used as a grammar to make legible the social and cultural fears that political campaigns propagate and harness.

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Founded for peace, spending for defence: the EU and the invasion of Ukraine

This blog by Dr Valentina Ausserladscheider, a recent PhD student at the Department of Sociology, was long-listed for The Loop's Best Blog Prize 2023. Germany recently announced an increase in defence spending, reflecting a broader European shift in response to the war in Ukraine. Using the concept of path dependency, Dr Ausserladscheider suggests that this shift breaks with the founding idea of peace in the European Union.

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From Cambridge to the World Bank: A PhD Student’s Experience in Global Digital Development (16 May 2023)

Pursuing an internship as PhD student is a great way to gain experience and pursue your goals. Iago Bojczuk, a second year Sociology PhD student reports on his experience at the World Bank.

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Crossroads and burning houses – why feminism cannot be colour-blind (9 Oct 2020)

Without a grasp of the intersecting nature of power, feminism is incapable of genuinely achieving liberation that goes beyond mere inclusion into a rigged system of oppressions, writes Miriam Dzah.

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2020 Coronavirus Pandemic: A Post-Structuralist Approach (9 Aug 2020)

The coronavirus pandemic has proved both horrifying and fascinating in almost equal measure, writes Gwen Jones.

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Authority in Coronavirus: Policing by Consent, or Coercion? (11 Jul 2020)

In the piece, first-year HSPS student Zak Macklin considers the role of authority in times of coronavirus through the lenses of major theories of power.

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The Environmental Impact of the Internet (10 Jun 2020)

Third-year sociology student Connie Walsh challenges the view of the internet as "incorpereal" and without enviromental impact.

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Why We Strike (10 Feb 2020)

Director of Undergraduate Education Dr Ella McPherson explains the rationale behind the UCU strikes and how students and staff can support each other. (Raven login required).

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The Wuhan Closure: Chaos, Love and Hope (29 Jan 2020)

Ruichen Zhang came home for Chinese New Year in January 2020 and is now stuck in Wuhan due to the coronavirus outbreak. Read her story of chaos, love and hope on The Cambridge Researcher.

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From PhD to Parliament and back: A POST fellowship experience (26 Jan 2020)

Amarpreet Kaur describes her time at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) during the second year of her PhD.

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Welcome to the Jungle: The Cruel Optimism of Amazon's Fulfillment Centres (13 Jan 2020)

Tom Mayer and Saide Mobayed from the MPhil Sociology programme reflect on a fieldtrip to the Amazon Fulfilment Centre in Peterborough.

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Chile in Crisis: Analysis from a country on the brink (5 Dec 2019)

Affiliated Lecturer Dr Jorge Saavedra Utman reports on the civil unrest from his home country of Chile, which he presents as “a pivotal case in the existence of neoliberalism and the shortcomings of democracy”.

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"Hearing the voices of women who need to be heard" (30 Apr 2019)

Members of the Decolonise Sociology Committee reflect on Angela Davis' historic visit to Cambridge in 2019, where she appeared in live conversation with poet and novellist Jackie Kay.

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