I teach on the sociology programme at University of Sheffield, supervise PhD students, and I am also involved in the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project.

PhD supervision

Current PhD Students

  • Dipti Nagpaul: Colonial Legacies, Racism, and the proliferation of Hindutva among Indian international students: A Study of Transnational Politics and Identity in a Postcolonial World
  • Beth Porter: Theorising refugee externalisation in the context of histories of British colonialism
  • Jimale Mohammed: Refugee community organisations in the UK.

Completed Sudents

  • Eda Yazici, (Un)belongings: within and against asylum dispersal in Sheffield
  • Khulud Sahhari, Library Use Amongst the Arabic Community in Sheffield
  • Dua’a Alemgbil, Oral Health in Zaatari Refugee Camp
  • Zihuan Zhang, Racism in China
  • Lucy Potter, Apostate refugees in the UK asylum system

Topics of interest

I am always keen to work with excellent students interested in researching:

  • Asylum in the UK and beyond
  • Colonialism
  • Post-colonialism
  • Human and refugee rights

Get in touch with a research proposal and CV if you would like to work with me.

Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project

I am an advisory board member and contributor to the Project which is led by Professor Gurminder K Bhambra and funded by the Sociological Review Foundation. Below is some information on the project lifted from the project website but to find out more then do visit the website itself.

The discipline of sociology is both organised in relation to a particular orientation to history as well as being constituted by that history. The failure to acknowledge the colonial histories that made the modern world contributes to what can be seen as the colonial structure of sociological thought itself. Sociology’s orientation to history tends to be based around an implicit consensus on the emergence of modernity and the related ‘rise of the West’, as well as around a stadial idea of progressive development and the privileging of Eurocentred histories in the construction of such an account. There are, however, two key deficiencies within such accounts. First, that the processes identified as significant in understanding the key events of modernity are not simply internal to Europe, but had broader, global, conditions of emergence and development. Second, that other global processes usually not addressed by sociology, such as (settler) colonialism and the European trade in human beings, are also significant aspects of the shift to modernity. These, however, tend to be elided in sociology’s conceptual framing of the making of the modern world.

Sociology’s orientation to history tends to be based around an implicit consensus on the emergence of modernity and the related ‘rise of the West’, as well as around a stadial idea of progressive development and the privileging of Eurocentred histories in the construction of such an account. There are, however, two key deficiencies within such accounts. First, that the processes identified as significant in understanding the key events of modernity are not simply internal to Europe, but had broader, global, conditions of emergence and development. Second, that other global processes usually not addressed by sociology, such as (settler) colonialism and the European trade in human beings, are also significant aspects of the shift to modernity. These, however, tend to be elided in sociology’s conceptual framing of the making of the modern world.

The Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project responds to these challenges by providing resources designed to support students and teachers interested in ‘decolonising’ school, college, and university curricula. It provides resources for the rethinking of sociological concepts, categories, and topics that will enable us to make better sense of the worlds we inhabit.