Last month we ran the in common exhibition in London. Curating and exhibiting as ‘live sociology’ was new to all of us. It was a brilliant, moving and exhausting experience from which we learnt a lot, and will definitely be repeating.
We recorded a podcast reflecting on our experiences, impressions and learning from this first (but certainly not last!) experiment with ‘live methods’. You can hear the podcast here:
Meanwhile, and looking back over 2017, it’s been yet another exciting, enjoyable and productive year on the Connectors Study.
Our special issue on political activism across the life course came out in July.
We’ve given presentations at the British and European Sociological Associations in Manchester and Athens respectively, as well as at the Nordic Geographers Meeting in Stockholm and the CatchEyoU Conference in Athens.
We were invited to present our work at Keele, Warwick, Huddersfield, Bedfordshire, Flensburg, Oxford and Panteion Universities, as well as the Open University, National University of Singapore, the Central University of Tamil Nadu and the Sacred Heart College in Tamil Nadu.
We took part in the Living Maps event on ‘new directions in ethnocartography’.
We also returned to the children in our study for a second biographical interview, and final round of data collection over the spring and early summer.
We also ran a series on the blog called ‘photo-stories from the field‘ documenting some of our experiences and encounters with children during the fieldwork.
A number of writing projects are currently under review.
And last but not least, the in common exhibition ran in London and Hyderabad. In London we also ran the one-day Making Connections training workshop in multimodal ethnography. You can read Elsie Whittington‘s and Francesca Vaghi‘s reflections on the workshop, and a further post from Alexandra Bulat next week.
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In other news, 2017 also saw the initiation of an institutional move, now complete. As of January 2018 the project and team will be based in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths College.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those colleagues, doctoral students and professional services staff at Sussex, in the Department of Social Work, at the Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth, and across the university, who supported us with their time, commitment, and enthusiasm over the last three and a half years.