CASEI is currently running two lecture and webinar series in collaboration with national and international partners:
Webinar series: Researching the Far Right: Methods and Ethics
This webinar series, co-organized by RPRN, CASEI and C-REX, aims to facilitate a much needed discussion about the methodological, ethical, political, personal, practical and professional challenges that arise when researching the far right.
The topics addressed in the webinars from September 2024 onwards will be based on the volume ‘The Ethics of Researching the Far Right: Critical Approaches and Reflections‘. Webinar recordings are available on the Reactionary Politics Research Network.
Previously, the webinar series was co-organized by C-REX and PERIL, and inspired by the volume ‘Researching the Far Right: Theory, Method and Practice’.
The webinars are moderated by Audrey Gagnon (C-REX), Aurelien Mondon (RNRP) and Aaron Winter (CASEI). The webinars will be held on the third Thursday of each month from 3-4:30pm CET.
Upcoming
Apr. 24, 2025 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Online Activism and the role of scholars of the far right
Previous
Feb. 20, 2025 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM, Online
with Katherine Williams, Vanessa Tautter, Carina Hoerst and Joan Braune
Jan. 16, 2025 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM, Online Care and safety when researching the far right
With Luc S. Cousineau (Dalhousie University), Tamta Gelashvili (University of Oslo), Kayla Preston (University of Toronto), and Iris B. Segers (University of Oslo)
Nov. 21, 2024 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Online Researching the far right: positionality, standpoint, and intersectionality
with Imo Kaufman, University of Nottingham, Rae Jereza, Frameworks, and Elsa Bengtsson Meuller, University of London
Oct. 17, 2024 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Online Terminology and why it matters
with Katy Brown (Maynooth University), Miranda Iossifidis (Newcastle University), George Newth (University of Bath) and Omran Shroufi (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Sep. 19, 2024 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM, Online The Ethics of Researching the Far Right: An Overview of the Field
with Audrey Gagnon, Aurelien Mondon, Antonia Vaughan and Aaron Winter
Recordings: Events – Reactionary Politics Research Network
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The Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power Lecture and Webinar Series
A collaboration between Identities, School of Social & Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow and CASEI at Lancaster University
Past and Forthcoming Webinars and Lectures:
12 May 2025
Global Dignity and Seeing Others: Political, Environmental and Work-based Recognition Compared With Prof Michèle Lamont, Harvard University
2025
Event organised by Maryhill Integration Network, in collaboration with Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER), Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CODE), Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
Flying While Muslim and Driving While Black: Examining the Differences in Racialized Surveillance and Policing for African American Muslims – 24 February 2025
With Dr Saher Selod, Simmons University
In this talk, Dr Saher Selod examines how being Black and Muslim guides the types of racialized policing and surveillance that men and women encounter, and how race, ethnicity and gender inform the types of policing and surveillance they experience. Dr Selod explores how federal security and local policing operate under different racialized constructions of threat: the construct of the ‘terrorist’ is a racial one that drives counterterrorism policies that mark Muslims as dangerous to national security, while the War on Drugs has marked African Americans as drug offenders and violent domestic criminals, making them susceptible to hyper policing.
2024
Identities 30th Anniversary Lecture with Dr Jean Beaman
In this lecture, based on years of ethnographic research on France’s present antiracist movement and mobilization against state violence, Dr Jean Beaman discusses how visible minorities, namely Black and Arab populations, make sense of the racism they experience at the hands of the state, including through violence by the police and how they resist this racism and violence. In doing so, Dr Beaman explores the balance they draw between acknowledging and resisting racism here, as in France, as well as there, as in globally. Dr Beaman discusses what lessons they offer regarding resisting colonial continuities and imagining a world beyond state violence and subjugation.
Identities 30th Anniversary Lecture with Professor Claire Alexander
It is now nearly forty years since Stuart Hall’s seminal 1988 ‘New Ethnicities’ article announced the ‘end of innocence’, or the end of ‘the innocent notion of an essential black subject’. The intervening decades have seen both the fragmentation and re-imagination of racial and ethnic identities, and ongoing racial and ethnic inequalities and exclusions. They have also seen the emergence of new forms of racial exclusion and the resurgence of essentialist forms of identity and resistance. This lecture traces some of these changes and explores some of the contemporary forms of identity politics, and their dangers. In particular it asks: what is the future for racial and ethnic solidarity and how do we find place for hope in treacherous times?
Identities 30th Anniversary Lecture with Professor Catherine Hall
From slavery and the 1831 rebellion to the events at Morant Bay in 1865 and the Windrush scandal, multiple wrongs have been done. They have not been put right. The British state, institutions and individual Britons are all implicated. Britain’s entangled past with Jamaica is not done; it lives on in the present. There is a debt to be paid. How might we think about the question of reparation and repair? Who carries responsibility? What might that mean?The Contested Conjuncture – Authoritarian Populism and Progressive Possibilities – 21 June 2024
This one day symposium, co-convened by The Stuart Hall Archive Project, Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture and Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, assesses the present ‘conjuncture’: critically analysing the history and condition of the Labour party and wider labour movement in Britain; the political consequences of national and global social, economic, and ecological crises; and the nature of hegemonic, dominant and emergent political projects.Online panel convened by Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
In the spirit of Stuart Hall’s approach to scholarship, critique and engagement, this session convenes a panel of speakers from Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the journal Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, to connect discussion of ‘conjunctures’ to contemporary crises and their respective terrain of struggle, in policing the crisis in the 21st century (Montel Gordon), class and everyday life (Kirsteen Paton), populism and the far right (Aaron Winter), and articulations of resistance in music (Les Back).
Fixing France: How to Repair a Broken Republic – 18 March 2024
With Nabila Ramdani
How does France work, how did it get here, and how can it change? Join us to discuss Nabila Ramdani’s newly published book, Fixing France: How to Repair a Broken Republic: “France – the romanticised, revolutionary land of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity for all – is failing. Reform is urgently needed. This book is a powerful indictment of the status quo, and a highly original perspective on the challenges to which the nation must rise. Nabila Ramdani is not from the establishment elite: she is a marginalised insider, born and raised in a neglected Paris suburb. With unflinching clarity, she probes the fault lines of her struggling country, exposing the Fifth Republic as an archaic system which emerged from Algeria’s cataclysmic War of Independence. Today, a monarchical President Macron shows little interest in democracy, while a far-right party founded by Nazi collaborators threatens to replace him. Segregation, institutionalised rioting, economic injustice, the debasement of women, a monolithic education system, deep-seated racial and religious discrimination, paramilitary policing, terrorism and extremism, and a duplicitous foreign policy all fuel the growing crisis. Yet Ramdani offers real hope: the broken French Republic can, and must, be fixed.”
Affective Control: The Emotional Life of (En)forcing Mobility Control in Europe – 11 March 2024
This panel event drew on a Special Issue published by Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power on Affective Control: The Emotional Life of Mobility Control in Europe
Current outcomes of immigration enforcement policies and apparatuses call for rethinking the ethics behind our understanding of community belonging, human rights and just society. The ethics at work are often presented as emotions creating a particular affective atmosphere that permits the ongoing implementation of enforcing migration. The Special Issue and panel focus on and examine emotions as processes of organizing that are mobilized in support of certain ethics. In the context of immigration enforcement, these emotions are not self-explanatory, but they can justify the potential for violence and even deem it necessary, including notably in the case of the emotions or affects of enforcers (as opposed to migrants), which have been less addressed. The contributions to the Special Issue and panel, which include the authors of four of the articles and the Guest Editors, pay particular attention to institutional racism within state structures. They reveal the ways in which emotions are instrumental to the operations of state bureaucracy within the repressive migration apparatus and point to the ethics that allow individuals to conform to state structures of oppression.
Articulating and Categorising Ethnic Identity: Reflections on Politics of Recognition and (Mis)representation in ‘Big Data’ Using the EVENS Survey – 23 February 2024
With Prof Nissa Finney, University of St Andrews
In a world awash with data how do we untangle ethnic identifications and their meanings, and how well do ‘big data’ capture ethnic identities? In this talk, Nissa considered how people articulate their ethnic identity, how this is – and isn’t – captured by statistical categorisations used as standard in Britian, and the implications of this for how we conduct research and the creation of knowledge on experiences of minoritized people. The presentation draws on a new, exciting national social survey that was led by Nissa – the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) – published in 2023 by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE). EVENS documents the experiences of over 14,000 people and provides unrivalled data on the lives of ethnic and religious minorities in Britain. Using EVENS, Nissa drew out concepts that underpin articulations of ethnic identity and argues that new formulations of ethnic group categories are needed to reflect these, and to more fully represent the twenty percent of ethnic minorities whose identities are not well captured by current approaches. Focusing on two groups who are not routinely identified in official ethnicity data collection – Jewish and White Eastern European – Nissa discussed the power of recognition afforded (or not) through the creation (or not) of statistical categories, and the implications for whose experiences are silenced.
2023
With Prof Michèle Lamont, Harvard University
In this seminar, Professor Michèle Lamont discussed her new book which explores the power of recognition – in rendering others as visible and valued – by drawing on nearly forty years of research and new interviews with young adults, and with cultural icons and change agents who intentionally practice recognition – from Nikole Hannah Jones and Cornel West to Michael Schur and Roxane Gay – showing how new narratives are essential for everyone to feel respect and assert their dignity. Seeing Others: How Recognition Works – and How It Can Heal a Divided World details how decades of neoliberalism have negatively impacted our sense of self-worth, up and down the income ladder, just as the American dream has become out of reach for most people. By prioritizing material and professional success, we have judged ourselves and others in terms of self-reliance, competition, and diplomas. The foregrounding of these attributes of the upper-middle class in our values system feeds into the marginalization of workers, people of colour, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and minority groups. The solution, Professor Lamont advances, is to shift our focus towards what we have in common while actively working to recognize the diverse ways one can live a life. Building on Lamont’s lifetime of expertise and revelatory connections between broad-ranging issues, Seeing Others delivers realistic sources of hope: by reducing stigma, we put change within reach.
With Prof Les Back, University of Glasgow
Sociologists very often have extra-curricular lives as musicians. This talk explored the relationship between musical life and sociological identities. Through a range of examples from Howard Becker’s grounding in field research as a pianist in the Chicago jazz clubs and his theories of deviance to the connection between Emma Jackson’s life as a bass player in Brit pop band Kenickie and her feminist punk sociology an argument is developed about the things sociologists learn from music. Based on twenty-seven life history interviews with contemporary sociologists this talk show how sociologists learn – both directly and tacitly – to understand society through their engagement with music. Music offers them an interpretive device to read cultural history, a training in the unspoken and yet structured aspects of culture and an attentiveness to improvised and interactive aspects of social interaction. For sociologists, involvement in music making is also an incitement to get off campus and encounter an alternative world of value and values. Music has enabled sociologists to sustain their research imaginations and inspire them to make sociology differently. However, the talk concluded that in the contemporary neoliberal university it is harder for sociologists to sustain a creative hinterland in music. The tacit knowledges that often nourish sociological identities may run the risk of being depleted as a result.
This online panel event discussed Raúl Pérez’s book, The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy (2022), which offers a rigorous study of the social meaning and consequences of racist humour. Drawing on a published symposium in Identities, panellists explored The Souls of White Jokes to think through the book’s themes and issues more expansively.Racism and the Republic: Understanding the Uprisings in France – 12 July 2023
The Police killing of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, joins a long established pattern of racialized police violence in France. The uprisings it sparked, too, are connected with continued mobilizations against state sanctioned racial discrimination, and cannot be understood apart from these encounters. Meanwhile, in speeches, newsrooms and social media posts, the language of ‘riots’ and ‘integration’ obscure these racialized social dynamics, in ways that portray the Republic as a victim of France’s hospitality. How has this come to pass and in what ways can be better understand current and unfolding developments? This specially convened panel of speakers can help us to do just this.Fireside Chat with Professor Nicola Rollock – 24 March 2023
Professor Nicola Rollock talks with Professor Nasar Meer about her new book, The Racial Code: Tales of Resistance and Survival, which uses narrative to explore and document the realities of everyday racism. In this transformative book, Nicola Rollock, one of our pre-eminent experts on racial justice, offers a vital exploration of the lived experience of racism.
Past Events Archive
Book launch of Unfree by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
The Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities (CASEI) are delighted to host the book launch of Unfree: migrant domestic workers in Arab States by Professor Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Professor of Sociology and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California on Monday 25 October 2021. Across the globe, migrant domestic workers are unfree workers whose legal residency is contingent on their continued employment as a live-in worker with a designated sponsor. This talk examines the politics of their indenture and the ramifications of this in understanding the global political economy of care. This is the first event in the Transforming Economies of Care Series, with more events to follow every month.
Discussants: Professor Nicola Mai, Professor of Sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia and Dr Sara Farris, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, UK. The launch is being hosted by the Director of CASEI, Distinguished Professor Beverley Skeggs, Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University.
You can register for the event via Eventbrite here. A video of the launch will be made available shortly afterwards through our YouTube channel. Please direct any queries to Michael Lambert at the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities (m.lambert3@lancaster.ac.uk).
On Thursday 21 October 2021 the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economies Inequalities (CASEI) hosted the virtual launch of the podcast Who do we think we are? hosted by Professor Michaela Benson, Professor in Public Sociology at Lancaster University. The Windrush Deportation Scandal, Brexit and citizens’ rights are watershed moments that have brought questions of citizenship, migration and belonging in Britain today into public view. These issues and more are discussed across the podcast
The contributors to the launch were:
Michaela Benson is Professor in Public Sociology at Lancaster University, co-lead of the ESRC-funded project Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit, and host and producer of Who do we think we are? Tweets @michaelacbenson.
Chantelle Lewis is Junior Research Fellow in Black British Studies at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, co-host and founder of the anti-racist podcast Surviving Society, and Deputy Director of Leading Routes. Tweets @ChantelleJLewis.
George Kalivis is a doctoral researcher in Visual Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, artist and architect.
A video of the launch will be made available shortly through our YouTube channel. For any enquiries relating to the event, please contact the organiser Dr Michael Lambert: m.lambert3@lancaster.ac.uk.
Dr Launch Clancy Book Launch: Running the Family Firm
The Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities (CASEI) hosted the launch of Running the Family Firm: How the Monarchy Manages its Image and Our Money (Manchester University Press, 2021) by one its members, Dr Laura Clancy on Tuesday 28 September 2021. Dr Clancy completed her PhD here in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University and is now a Lecturer in Media. Her book is based on this body of original work and is an excellent showcase for its world-leading research. The book shows unequivocally that we cannot talk about inequalities in Britain today without talking about the monarchy. It is available in hardback, paperback and as an ebook through the publisher’s website.
Owing to ongoing restrictions due to the Coronavirus pandemic the launch will be hosted virtually via MS Teams on Tuesday 28 September 2021, 4pm-5:30pm UK BST. It will be chaired by the Director of CASEI Distinguished Professor Beverley Skeggs and feature Dr Bruce Bennett (Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, Lancaster University), Professor Helen Wood (Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, Lancaster University), and Dr Sivamohan Valluvan (Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick), as discussants as well as questions and answers with the author.
You can register for the event via Eventbrite here. A video of the launch is available through our YouTube channel which you can watch here. For any enquiries relating to the event, please contact the organiser Dr Michael Lambert: m.lambert3@lancaster.ac.uk.
‘On Neoreaction (NRx) and its Software’ by Professor Roger Burrows
On Tuesday 8 June 2021 the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities (CASEI) hosted a virtual lecture by Professor Roger Burrows, Professor of Cities at Newcastle University. This public talk examined the impact of neoreactionary (NRx) thinking on contemporary, political debates manifest in ‘architectures of exit’.
The public talk has been published as part of a special issue on ‘Post-neoliberalism’ in Theory, Culture and Society with Harrison Smith. You can watch a short introduction to the paper by Roger Burrows here, and download the paper which has been made available open access here. A video of the talk is available through Lancaster University Sociology Department YouTube channel here.
For any enquiries relating to the event, please contact the organiser Dr Michael Lambert: m.lambert3@lancaster.ac.uk.
‘COVID-19, capitalism, and social reproduction in crisis’ by Professor Silvia Federici
As part of a postgraduate module taught in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University – ‘Capitalism and crisis’ – and in conjunction with the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities, on 20 April 2021 Professor Silvia Federici spoke on ‘COVID-19, capitalism, and social reproduction in crisis’. The event was organised, introduced and chaired by Dr Francesca Coin, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University with Professor Beverley Skeggs, the Director of CASEI and a Distinguished Professor in Sociology at Lancaster University.
In her talk, Silvia looked at how the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the policies of dispossession, impoverishment and deprivation that have underpinned the history of capitalism since its inception. Looking at the disastrous impact of the recent crises on social reproduction, Silvia Federici discussed the efforts that women are making all over the world to de-privatise our everyday lives and create cooperative forms of living in our societies.
You can watch a video of the talk through the Lancaster University Sociology Department YouTube channel here. For any enquiries relating to the event, please contact the organiser Dr Michael Lambert: m.lambert3@lancaster.ac.uk.
Distinguished Professor Bob Jessop Festschrift
On 28 October 2020 Lancaster University Sociology Department and the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities (CASEI) hosted a virtual Festschrift to recognise and celebrate the work of Distinguished Professor Bob Jessop.
Since arriving as a Professor in Sociology in 1990, he has contributed immeasurably to the intellectual, organisational, and cultural life of the University and the Sociology Department. The event on 29 October went some way towards recognising the contributions he has made across his career on the occasion of his retirement.
The event was introduced by Professor Imogen Tyler (Head of Department, Lancaster University Sociology Department) and was Chaired by Distinguished Professor Bev Skeggs (Director, CASEI) and featured six internationally acclaimed speakers in three panels covering different aspects of Bob’s work: political economy; governance; Marxism. The speakers were:
Professor Andrew Sayer (Emeritus Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy, Lancaster University)
Dr Ngai-Ling Sum (Honorary Researcher, Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities, Lancaster University)
Professor Juan Carlos Monedero (Professor of Political Science, Complutense University of Madrid)
Professor Martin Jones (Deputy Vice Chancellor, Staffordshire University)
Professor Alex Demirovic (Emeritus Professor of Critical Social Theory, Goethe University Frankfurt)
Professor Michael Brie (Senior Fellow for Socialist Transformation Research and the History of Socialism, Rosa Luxemburg Institute)
The event also featured a short reflection and commentary by Distinguished Professor Leo Panitch on the wider context of Bob’s work and it’s global reach into a range of debates.
There will be a number of forthcoming publications connected to the event. A recording of the virtual Festschrift is available here.
Who Cares in a Shrinking State? Responsibility and Respectability Reconsidered
On 30 September 2019 we welcomed LSE Centennial Professor Mary Evans to Lancaster University to discuss her research into the nature of respectability, asking “who is responsible?” and how?, what forms of deserving and undeserving distinctions are drawn between women when the state abdicates its responsibility.
As the state in the UK shrinks its responsibility for social care, Mary asked who will provide for the children, the elderly, the less able and those who need care? She discussed the impact of the “care sandwich” as mothers give up work to care for their elderly family members as well as their very young family members and in between the sandwich of young and old is all the regular care that they disperse daily. Beyond this is the “triple whammy” of amplified inequalities through austerity cuts to benefits, further caring responsibilities with the retreat of the state and the impact on women.