I am very pleased to be announcing this relaunch of the LSE Sociology blog, Researching Sociology. The blog was originally launched in 2013, and quickly became a leading sociology blog. This new version of the blog has been timed to coincide with the roll-out of the Department of Sociology’s new website.
From the outset, Researching Sociology has sought to reflect the very best of the discipline as practiced by our academic faculty, visitors and students. As a department, we are strongly committed to a sociology which engages critically, not only with the latest theoretical and empirical developments in the discipline, but also with the ‘state of the world’. We believe that sociologists should be centrally concerned with major challenges of our time, in areas such as inequalities, climate change and the environment, financialisation, urbanization, science, technology, human rights and culture. As sociologists, our work is united by both a common focus on core analytical problems within the discipline, and a commitment to using wide-ranging and innovative methods. All of us are connected to and collaborating with non-academic audiences and practitioners in areas such as cities and urban designers, central banks and regulators, governments and NGOs, activists and community groups. We see Researching Sociology as a key platform for these forms of public engagement.
I am also pleased to announce one additional feature of this blog. The department has a long association with the British Journal of Sociology, which is one of the leading sociology journals in the world. The journal publishes cutting-edge work across a wide variety of sociological concerns, and we plan to use this platform to showcase this work by inviting authors to reflect on their articles – with short commentaries, interviews and videos – here. Together with contributions from our students and staff, we believe that Researching Sociology will go from strength to strength and become the leading sociology blog in the world.
Nigel Dodd is a Professor in Sociology and Head of Department in the Department of Sociology at LSE, as well as Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Sociology. His main interests are in the sociology of money, economic sociology, and classical and contemporary social thought.