I am Director of the Social Theory Centre at the University of Warwick and responsible for organising research activities such as reading groups and symposia under its auspices. For details of the Centre, see here.
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Connected Histories / Connected Sociologies: Rethinking the Global
This ESRC funded research network (2009-2011) brings together a range of early career scholars, from different disciplinary and geographical areas, with a common interest in the research theme and addresses a specific research problem – that of global interconnections – in light of postcolonial critiques of the ‘Eurocentrism’ of dominant approaches. It does so in the context of specific epistemological and methodological challenges associated with interdisciplinary research undertaken in an international and cross-cultural context. Indeed, these substantive and methodological issues are seen as integrally related. For example, while the focus of social science research has historically been delimited by national boundaries, it is now increasingly international and cross-cultural. This is, in part, as a consequence of increasing recognition that the issues that affect us within national communities are international in their nature and source. Further, such issues are rarely of concern simply to one discipline and are taken up within different disciplines, but often without common dialogue across the boundaries of those disciplines. There is frequently no address of the unique methodological issues raised by interdisciplinary research, nor reflection on the challenges of building knowledge systematically across disciplinary boundaries. This research network on ‘connected histories/ connected sociologies’, addresses fundamental questions of interdisciplinarity in the context of thinking and rethinking globalisation and the social scientific categories it produces and which also produce it as an object of research. In this way, we engage with recent discussions of the sociology of science and reflexivity in their application to the social sciences, such that social inquiry is not seen simply as a form of reflection upon a world produced by (other) social actors, but is also the co-producer of that world. Sociology and history as disciplines are crucial because of the way that they seem to be mutually implicated in forms of thinking and rethinking of the past in terms of its relation to the present. Further details are available here.
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British Sociological Association Theory Study Group 
I am convenor of the British Sociological Association's Theory Study Group and was Study Groups' Representative on BSA Council from 2008-2011. I was on the conference committee organising the BSA annual conference for 2008 and 2011 and I co-ordinate the Theory stream at the annual conference.
The Theory Study Group provides a forum for those interested in sociological and social theory. To signal the start of a new period of activity for the group, we organised a high-profile international conference to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the events of May 1968 (see website). The 2009 conference was organised around the theme: 'Have we ever been "post"?: Critiques of Sociological Knowledge'. In 2011 we organised an international conference on the theme 'Rethinking the Modern: Empire, Colonialism, and Slavery' and for 2012 have planned an international symposium on 'The Crisis of Theory, The Crisis of Europe'.
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Historical Cartographies of Europe: Mapping the Postcolonial Landscape
Defining Europe, as with any project of identity construction, is necessarily political and contested. From historical understandings of Europe as coterminous with Christendom, to later understandings emphasizing its secularization, Europe has typically been represented in terms of its internal solidarities as defined against the others from whom it seeks to distinguish itself. This is reinforced in contemporary understandings of European identity in the context of EU expansion and consolidation. Europe, then, has often been understood in terms of being more an idea than a place, with Hayden White, for example, asserting that ‘“Europe” has never existed anywhere except in discourse’ (2000: 67). This is not to suggest that the discourse of Europe has no implication for a sense of place and who is ‘in place’. This project takes these discourses seriously and examines the naturalized cartographies of Europe from a postcolonial perspective that highlights the typical exclusion of non-European ‘others’. This is a collaborative, inter-disciplinary and transnational research project for which we are in the process of seeking funding.
