Department of Sociology

For almost 60 years, Durham’s Department of Sociology has been working on theoretically informed research that makes a positive difference to the lives of individuals and communities often regarded as ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘marginalised’.  

Currently, we do this in five key areas: 1) Violence and Abuse, 2) Higher Education and Social Inequality 3) Communities and Social Justice 4) Health and Social Theory, and 5) Criminal Justice, Social Harm and Inequalities.  

Our academic staff are obviously hugely devoted to this work, but they do not and could not do this work on their own:  

• We are highly dependent on our collaborations with our research partners – academics in other universities, voluntary and community sector groups, statutory sector organisations, people with lived experience of the topics we are researching. We work with these partners locally, regionally and internationally and their work and ideas are integral to the research questions we ask, the data we collect, the findings we share, and the change we create.  
• The people support us ‘behind the scenes’ in our research are often less visible in the research process – these are our colleagues who work in our library, in research administration, in partnerships, in finance amongst others – we are all one part the jigsaw that makes research successes happen and we want to thank and recognise those who are less visible in this.