Sociology

About the Department

The Department of Sociology at LSE was the first to be created in Britain and has played a key role in establishing and developing the discipline nationally and internationally – since 1904. Today the Department has around 25 teaching staff, together with a number of research fellows, visiting professors and visiting scholars from all over the world. The Department is committed to empirically rich, conceptually sophisticated, and socially and politically relevant research and scholarship, building upon the traditions of the discipline, and playing a key role in the development of the social sciences into the new intellectual areas, social problems, and ethical dilemmas that face a globalised post-modern society.

Sociology at LSE is theoretically and methodologically diverse, but our research priorities focus upon the following key areas:

• Biomedicine, bioscience and biotechnology: the forms of social, political and cultural change associated with the rise of biotechnology, biomedicine and bioscience are the subject of an extensive research programme within the BIOS Centre for the Study of Biomedicine, Biotechnology, Bioscience and Society. Key research themes include social aspects of synthetic biology, the neurosciences, reproductive and regenerative technologies, bioeconomics and biocapital, global 'bio' politics, changing definitions of life or 'life itself'; the sociology of bioethics, public engagement with science, and biosecurity'. BIOS is a leader in both theoretical and methodological innovation in these fields and has extensive PhD, MSc and post-doctoral training programmes.
• Cities and urbanism: the relationship between social, spatial and physical forms and processes in cities: urban development and urban governance; urban environments, mobility and morphology; social and spatial exclusion; privatised control strategies and urban regeneration; urban economies, including criminal organisations, markets and cultures; crime and violence; transnational urbanism, including cities in global networks, and the emergence of cross-border criminal activity.
• Economy, culture and society: the nature of contemporary economic knowledges, including a critical engagement with both economics and economic sociology, the role of economic knowledges in economic life, and the reconstruction of economic categories from within social research. Transnationalism, development and globalisation, engaged through clear empirical focuses (for example, development discourses and practices, creative industries policy, corporations and regulatory bodies). Finally, the cluster has a strong track record in several substantive areas that group members in diverse ways, above all: work and employment, risk and regulation, money and value, consumption and market society, creative and cultural industries, technology and economy.
• Gender: analysis of gender relations and representations; transnational analyses of gender, race, ethnicity and sexualities; intersectionality and new forms of discrimination; feminist pasts and futures; gender and development; economic inequalities, social and political rights.
• Human rights: dimensions of inequality and exclusion locally, nationally and internationally; gender and sexual divisions; issues of human rights in a global context; human rights as they arise in the context of biotechnology and bio-ethics and in new forms of legal regulation associated with security, war and terror.
• Politics and society: the social, economic, institutional and ideological bases of politics, the interaction of states and societies, and comparative and historical approaches. Topics of central interest are political parties and social movements, especially the study of labour movements and the left. The area encompasses the evolution and impact of political ideas, including liberalism, socialism, conservatism, populism and environmentalism, as well as political and economic democracy, ethnic violence and political repression, and fundamental social and political change.
• Race, racism and ethnicity: the social, cultural and governmental aspects of colonial and postcolonial societies. Nationalism, challenges and transformations in geo-politics, governance and citizenship in an era characterised by migration, flight, asylum, multiculture, cultural hybridity, cosmopolitanism and supposed 'civilisational' conflict.
• Crime and control: criminological theory, criminal cultures, organisations and markets, victimology, criminal investigation, the changing nature of crime, alcohol and public disorder, punishment and control, the relationship between privatised control strategies and urban regeneration, gender and social control, the emergence of cross border criminal activity, violence.

The LSE has been recognised as a Doctoral Training Centre (DTC). As well as research training in the Department, the Methodology Institute provides a range of specialised courses in quantitative and qualitative research methods and statistics.

The Department is responsible for one of the world's leading specialist periodicals, the British Journal of Sociology and also houses the influential interdisciplinary social science journal Economy and Society. BioSocieties publishes scholarship across the social science disciplines, and represents a lively and balanced array of perspectives on controversial issues, demonstrating the constructive potential of interdisciplinary dialogue and debate across the social and natural sciences.

The Department supports and promotes academic diversity within the School through these programmes and through its central participation in BIOS (Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society), LSE Cities, the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, the Methodology Institute, STICERD (Suntory and Toyota International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines), and the Mannheim Centre for the Study of Crime and Criminal Justice.

Staff and their academic interests

• Dr Claire Alexander: Race and ethnicity in Britain; masculinities and violence; youth and gangs; identity and difference; urban ethnography.
• Dr Suki Ali: Gender and sexualities; mixed race and new ethnicities; postcolonial theory; families; education; visual culture.
• Dr Robin Archer: Political sociology, especially labour movements and the left; liberalism, socialism and conservatism; the social bases of American politics; political institutions and political economy; and comparative and historical approaches.
• Professor Chetan Bhatt – Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights: Modern social theory and philosophy, romanticism, idealism, nationalism; the religious right and religious conflict; racism and ethnicity, South Asia, Middle East.
• Professor Ricky Burdett – Professor of Urban Studies, Director of LSE Cities: Urban design; urban regeneration and planning policies; relationship between urban environment and urban society; architecture and public space; sustainable design and communities; design competitions and initiatives. 
• Dr Alasdair Cochrane: Philosophical justification of rights; contemporary political theory; environmentalism; animal ethics and bioethics.
• Dr Ayona Datta: Spatiality of homelessness and social agency; gender, space, and power; architecture and cultural identity.
• Dr Manali Desai: State formation; left parties and anti-poverty policies; ethnic violence; post-colonial studies.
• Dr Nigel Dodd: Sociology of money, politics of monetary and financial integration; consumerism; globalisation; modernity and post-modernity.
• Dr Janet Foster: Extensive experience as a qualitative researcher on crime, community and policing issues; conducted an evaluation of the impact of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry on policing.
• Professor Sarah Franklin – Professor of Social Studies of Biomedicine: New reproductive and genetic technologies; kinship; gender; science studies.
• Professor Paul Gilroy – Anthony Giddens Professor of Social Theory: Race and social theory; predicament of Europe's post-colonial peoples of colour; cultural history of western hemisphere black populations; automotivity and consumer culture; post-colonial melancholia; new world black music in the twentieth century.
• Dr Ursula Henz: Social stratification; modern family demography; and the sociology of the life course.
• Professor Bridget Hutter – Peacock Professor in Risk Management: Regulation and risk management; regulation of economic life particularly food, financial, occupational health and safety; environmental regulation; social control.
• Dr Patrick McGovern: Economic sociology, especially work and labour markets; inequality at work; international migration and social mobility.
• Dr Claire Moon: War and genocide, political reconciliation, and human rights from an interdisciplinary perspective that draws upon sociology, critical legal studies and international relations.
• Dr Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra: Sociotechnical dimensions of financial markets, from socio-historical aspects of the adoption of information and communication technologies in stock exchanges to the analysis of some of the current transformations within global finance.
• Professor Nikolas Rose – Martin White Professor of Sociology: Social and political history of human sciences; genealogy of subjectivity; history of empirical thought in sociology; changing rationalities and techniques of political power; social, ethical, cultural and legal implications of developments in brain sciences; psychiatric genetics and psycho-pharmacology.
• Dr Don Slater: Sociology of economic life; theories of market society and consumer culture; sociology of the internet and new media; visual culture.
• Dr Fran Tonkiss - Director of LSE Cities Programme: Economic sociology; markets and marketisation; trust and social capital; cities, space and urban theory.
• Professor Judy Wajcman: Sociology of work and employment; science and technology studies; sociology of information and communication technologies, gender theory and organisational analysis.

Opportunities for research

You should usually have a master's degree or a first or high upper second class honours degree from a British university, or its equivalent in another country, in either sociology or another related social science.

When you apply for an MPhil/PhD, you will need to send us a research proposal that sets out clearly the research problem you wish to investigate, explains why it is important, and describes the methods of research you propose to use. This will help us to evaluate your potential to embark on a research degree, and to identify a supervisor with similar interests and the appropriate expertise. We will also need to see one or two pieces of written work that you feel reflect your academic interests and abilities. You will be initially registered for the MPhil. At the end of your second year or early in your third (full-time), you will be transferred to PhD registration upon successful completion of our 'upgrade' procedure (submission of three complete chapters, examined by viva voce).

In the first year, you will spend over half your time taking a range of methods and specialist courses. These are selected in discussion with your supervisor, dependent on your needs and may include courses from other institutes or departments at LSE. You must attend the first year research class for MPhil students and, unless you have already successfully studied research methods at master's level, you will normally be expected to complete graduate course units in methodology, on the advice of your supervisor. If you accept an offer of admission from us, we will send you information on methodology requirements and other relevant matters.

At the end of your first year, you will produce a 5,000 word research proposal, outlining the aims and methods of your thesis. This has to reach an acceptable standard to enable you to progress to the second year.

After the first year, you will spend more time on independent study under the guidance of your personal supervisor. This will involve the collection, organisation, analysis and writing up of data and ideas. At least once a week you will attend a general research seminar and/or specialist workshops and seminars related to your interests. You will be expected to make an active contribution to these by presenting papers and joining in the general discussion.

The Department will only accept candidates for a Michaelmas term start.

Taught programmes

• MSc Sociology
• MSc Sociology (Research)
• MSc Sociology (Contemporary Social Thought)
• MSc Sociology (Economic Sociology)
• MSc Biomedicine, Bioscience and Society
• MSc City Design and Social Science
• MSc Culture and Society
• MSc Human Rights
• MSc Political Sociology
• MSc Race, Ethnicity and Post Colonial Studies
• MSc International Migration and Public Policy 
• Diploma in Sociology 
• Sociology is also available as a specialist field in MSc Social Research Methods