In August, The Modernist Society put out a call for an upcoming edition of their magazine on the theme of ‘QUIET ‘. The call was: QUIET is the new loud. Think of all the modernist places that have quietly been going about their thing without getting the attention they deserve. Design that is subtly striking. Spaces that…

In 1999, I was part of a group from the University of Leicester that visited New York to host a residential teaching weekend for our USA-based distance-learning students. Our partners in New York were The New York Institute of Finance (NYIF) located on the 17th floor (Suite 1700) of 2 World Trade Center, the South…

Working with Older People 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1108/WWOP-06-2026-0049

As a practising sociologist, I have many obsessions, concerns, and interests, some of which, I am told, border on the compulsive. For example, I have a longstanding interest in ephemera, documents of life, and everyday materials. For at least twenty years, I have continuously acquired items of sociological interest to me (even if no one…

Along with Diane Levine, Morenike Oyenubi, and Dov Stekel, I have a new book chapter coming that focuses on Artificial Intelligence and the interpretation of draw-and-write data: Creative possibilities and epistemological limits. Can we (should we) use AI to help creatively interpret based on fieldwork drawings and images? Images from Pearl Jephcott’s research notebooks are…

The complex interconnections of sexual abuse, greed, power and influence, and the unholy mix of financiers, politicians, royalty, celebrities, the military, intellectuals and others with actual or perceived ‘power’ that we can all see in the release of the Epstein files, is a site for sociological analysis as well as political and legal commentary. One…

Since the early 2000s, I have devoted considerable time to reworking, reconsidering, and revisiting legacy studies in sociology. Be it Elias, Jephcott, or many others, one of the things that intrigues me is the connections between academics and academic communities. Of course, at the time of the studies that interest me – 1940s-1960s – the…

Visual work allows us to see the ongoing and embodied practice everyday life, productions that are multidimensional and chaotic: skills and performances that cannot be reduced to words and which words alone cannot represent. Visual work embeds its’ sociological subjects in context. It places the unfolding of action in space and time, in particular material…

Image 1: Students In Amsterdam or Leiden circa 1930, (c) John Goodwin Collection At a Sunday market near the old Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam in 2018, there were many stalls selling photographs, artwork, paintings, and vintage pin badges in various designs, colours, and patterns. One photograph struck me as particularly interesting. I inquired about the…