Linsey McGoey is giving a lecture in Sweden (June 16-18, 2025, Keynote speaker, 8th Annual Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop, 2025).
Linsey is also giving an invited talk at ‘Contested Transgressions,’ SAI: Social Theory Symposium, UCC, Cork, April 25-26, 2025, and gave a talk for the Yale Law Seminar Series, March 26, 2025.
She has been publishing blogs on her US fieldwork with the London Review of Books.
Her recent publications include ‘Hierarchies of White Ignorance and Reciprist Epistemology (in press, Media Theory), and (with Jana Bacevic) ‘Liberal fatalism, COVID 19 and the politics of impossibility’ (2024, Economy and Society).
During the Autumn Term, Professor Anna Sergi published the following articles (in their online first version):
The Reputation of the Invisibles: The Society of Santa as a Para-Masonic Criminal Entity Above the Calabrian’Ndrangheta - with Alberto Vannucci in "Deviant Behavior”
Capturing Calabria?‘ndrangheta, corruption, and maladministration in local public institutions in Southern Italy with Alberto Vannucci in "Small Wars & Insurgencies"
Intergenerational and technological changes in mafia-type groups: a transcultural research agenda to study the ‘ndrangheta and its mobility - with Anita Lavorgna in “SN Social Sciences"
In December, Professor Sergi, pictured left, won the Antonino Caponnetto Award, for promoting a culture of legality. Antonino Caponnetto was chief of the anti-mafia pool in Palermo during the murderous times of Cosa Nostra in the 1990s.
During impact leave for the Spring Term, Professor Sergi has worked on her new short book with Bristol University Press “How to Recognise the Mafia Abroad: Critical notes on the ’ndrangheta” which is due to come out in November, and has served as the basis for police and media training in Australia during February 2025. Professor Sergi has also organised events with the Italian community in Melbourne and seminars at the University of Melbourne.
During the Autumn Term, Professor Sergi was co-host of two podcast. One, in English, produced by Carlo Oreglia for SBS Australia “My Australian Mafia Roadtrip” and the other, in Italian, produced by Choramedia and Europod and written with Francesca Berardi “Mare di Rabbia”. Both on Spotify and other podcast platforms. An English version of Mare di Rabbia is also available as Sea of Rage by Europod, which combines the Italian podcast and a Spanish similar one! In March 2025 Mare di Rabbia/Sea of Rage/Mar de Rabia has won an award for best production at the Premios Ondas Globales del Podcast in Spain!
In the meantime, Professor Sergi attended the European Union Drugs Agency (new name, new mandate!) conference on Drug Violence as and invited panel expert in Brussels and presented her book ‘L’inferno Ammobiliato’ at the FILI Festival in Bologna, see photo right.
In October Professor Sergi won the Mondo Nuovo Book Club award for a short story she wrote within the competition Match Point 2024, for Italian stories in the UK.
New Publication: Demireva, N., & Iacono, S. L. (2024). Gambling outlets as agents of local area disorganization: Crime and local institutions, the case of the UK. Acta Sociologica
Abstract
Policy makers have growing concerns about exposure to high gambling density. This study establishes a significant positive association between gambling premises and neighbourhood social disorganization which is on par with other established criminogenic places such as evening economy outlets. Moreover, this negative impact is not restricted just to deprived areas, and increased guardianship through homeowners does not shield the local community. Small business owners however do play a protective role, and this study concludes that they are important for the well-being and resilience of the local area. Our data analysis has been guided by reports produced by local authorities concerned about land-based gambling premises and their effect upon local communities. Our results make an important sociological contribution to the current explanation of social disorganization in local areas as well as provide empirical identification of institutions which can support efforts to reduce criminality. This research suggests that a viable policy instrument for controlling criminality and improving the crime rates of the local area should be the close monitoring of gambling outlet density. If the goal is to encourage the well-being and resilience of the local community, and the reduction of empty spaces, this can be best achieved through supporting small businesses which clearly contribute to social organization.
New working paper alert! with Wouter Zwysen. Using three ad-hoc modules of the EU Labour Force Survey, we show that non-economic migrants benefit relatively much more (compared to economic migrants) from host-country human capital, particularly better language skills, host country qualifications and having equivalised their degrees. Equivalising degrees obtained abroad and host country qualifications are so crucial to the successful labour market insertion of migrants (both in terms of probability of employment and occupational attainment), we believe these merit sustained attention and support from policy makers. Country context also matters - for example: a supportive asylum regime is associated with higher rates of acquisitions of host country human capital.
In the autumn, Neli was an invited speaker at the bilingual Symposium: "Political institutions in search of trust" which was held in Brussels and had more than 200 policy makers and academics from around the world. The recording of my talk on "Ethnic minorities, trust in institutions and political trust" is available on YouTube.
Colin Samson is on the editorial team of the Journal of the Semiotics of Law with two colleagues from the University of Salento. The theme is ‘Human Rights, Recognition and Decoloniality’.
Colin will be submitting a piece co-authored with former PhD student Passent Moussa on ‘Human Rights after the War on Gaza’ for it. Others in the department might also be interested in submitting an abstract for consideration.
On 4 April, Colin was on a panel with Anuj Kapilashrami to discuss ‘Decolonizing Human Rights,’ coordinated by Paul Hunt from Essex Law School.
On 28 March, Colin was interviewed about his book The Colonialism of Human Rights by Morteza Hajizedeh for the New Books Network broadcast.
The Spanish translation of Alejandra’s book came out: "La migración centroamericana a través de México: familias de origen, familias del camino y comunidad transitoria de migrantes"
Alejandra is also a new Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Tara was invited to participate in a workshop at the Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen in June 2024 titled “Re-Configuring Health and Illness at the Brain-Computer Interface”. She shared a paper on the development and use of personalised brain models for epilepsy surgery, suggesting how she thinks the personal is being reinterpreted in computational laboratories: as a set of model constraints; as relational; and as algorithmic embodiments of the personal intuition of clinical judgement that these very algorithms are supposed to be eliminating. The workshop organisers are in the process of submitting the papers for a thematic issue in an STS journal.
In July 2024, Tara attended the joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). She organised a panel with Christine Aicardi (King’s College London) titled “Entangling mind and machine: artificial intelligence, neuroscience and neurotechnology” to explore the following questions: 1) What can previous iterations of entangling mind and machine tell us about contemporary AI, neuroscience and neurotechnology? 2) How are current entanglements different, and what do they mean for future AI, neuroscience and neurotechnology? We received several submissions and ended up with two sessions with a total of 7 papers from researchers at the University of Washington, Oregon Health and Science University, the Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris, the University of South Wales, the University of Ottawa, Brown University, University College London and Universite Grenobles Alpes. Christine and Tara are now working on a paper with one of the panel participants on ‘speculative modelling’ in neuroscience and robotics.
Finally, a paper Tara co-authored with colleagues from the Human Brain Project was published in November 2024:
Geminiani, A., Kathrein, J., Yegenoglu, A., Vogel, F., Armendariz, M., Ben-Zion, Z., Antoniu Bogdan, P., Joana, C., Diaz Pier, M., Grasenick, K., Karasenko, V., Klijn, W., Kokan, T., Alina Lupascu, C., Luhrs, A., Mahfoud, T., Ozden, T., Egholm Pedersen, J., Peres, L., Reiten, I., Simidjievski, N., Ulnicane, I., van der Vlag, M., Zehl, L., Saria, A., Diaz-Pier, S. and Passecker, J., (2024). “Interdisciplinary and collaborative training in neuroscience: Insights from the Human Brain Project Education Programme.” NeuroInformatics 22 (4), 657-678.
Sobia Kaker has won a British Academy Small Grant for a project titled Patchworked Policing: A pilot study of policing arrangements in socio-spatially divided southern megacities.
The project will last 17 months, starting in August this year, and Sobie will work with Dr Zoha Waseem (University of Warwick).
Samuel Singler has been invited to run a seminar at Helsinki University in April, titled “Pragmatism and the technopolitics of border control”.
He has also been invited to give a talk to the Finnish Society of Criminology in May, on the topic “Border control technologies and the blurred boundaries of criminal justice”.
In February, as part of the Border Criminologies network, Samuel arranged the first meeting of the new Technology & Digital Futures thematic group.
Sean Nixon published the 3rd edition of the book Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices - Culture, Media and Identities series.
Earlier this year, Giacomo was invited to give a talk on parenting and inequality at a policy conference titled The Future of Families, organised by ISER (The Future of Families Policy Conference).
Giacomo co-wrote a report on the gender pay gap in collaboration with the women’s rights charity, the Fawcett Society. You can access the report here: Equal Pay Day Campaign Archive. He also developed a gender pay gap calculator for Fawcett, available here: Gender Pay Gap Calculator, which received attention in the press (eg: Metro.co.uk).
Pictured above is Giacomo with Professor Susan Harkness and Professor Brienna Perelli-Harris at the The Future of Families conference in London.
Giacomo is participating in a European research project titled EqualHealth, focusing on Non-Standard Work Schedules and Mental Health over the Life Course. The project is hosted by the French Institute for Demographic Studies in Paris. In May 2025, Giacomo has been invited to give a talk on parenting and inequality at the workshop Caregiving Across the Life Course, organised by the Centre for Economic Demography at Lund University School of Economics and Management (LUSEM).
Dr Alejandra Diaz De Leon
Professor Sean Nixon