Join our team of writers in residence for Durham Sociology Department's Sociology in Action week 2021.

All events for this week are now taking place online.    please use the late sign up form to indicate which sessions you would like to join and we will endeavour to you to those with spaces. 

Coming to Durham to study in the Sociology Department is exciting, daunting, challenging in equal measure. Because of the topics we teach and research, many of our students end up not only developing a critical approach to thinking about society but also developing a critical approach to thinking about themselves in relation to society and in relation to the University. The diversity of staff and students in the Department mean that we are often in discussion and/or reflection about our intersecting identities of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, citizenship status and how these are represented in our programmes of study and in the university more generally.

In academic writing there is a debate about the extent to which ‘I’ should be used but in the Sociology Department we encourage students to engage with the ‘I’ in discussions about social inequalities, power and identities as well as in assessments that ask for reflective writing. Students enjoy this challenge yet sometimes they also struggle to find ways to express a sense of ‘I’ that also engages with the academic literature. In this year’s Sociology in Action week we are exploring this struggle and offering students opportunities to work with professional creative writers to develop their writing style to include ‘I’ across intersecting identities.

In our Sociology in Action project, at the end of the Summer of 2020/21, Durham's Sociology Department is working with a group of three creative writers to run a short residency working with students and staff from within the Sociology Department, the wider University and beyond the University. 

The programme will be focused around an intensive programme of events in the week of the 28th of June which will be run collaboratively by the three writers. 

Following the residency, our creative writers will provide short tutorials to support student writers who would like to do so to produce a piece of writing of their own to be showcased in the Autumn term.