Meet your tutors

Becoming a sociologist

I came to sociology late, having studied Chinese and Spanish languages as an undergraduate, Chinese studies for my Masters, and sociology for my PhD. But I’ve always been interested in the power of social environments to shape people’s identities.

Growing up gay in a conservative town, attending a Catholic school where ‘boys played football’ and ‘girls played netball’, I felt gender and sexuality norms limit who we can be and how we can live.

It wasn’t until university that I found ways to explore and challenge these limitations. Moving into sociology combined interests in cultural diversity with desires to make a difference. For nearly a decade, I’ve been working with LGBTQ+ organisations in China to understand their issues, thinking about how to bring change.

Following passions

Although my interest in gender and sexuality began in the UK, my degree took me to China, which profoundly shaped my future. My research journey began through making friends in local LGBTQ+ communities. During PhD fieldwork, I became a regional coordinator for True Self, China’s largest LGBTQ+ organisation, and even spent six months working as a dancer in a local gay bar.

At York, you’ll also have the opportunity to do your own first-hand research as part of your dissertation project. This is an opportunity to explore a topic that is personally important to you, to collect and analyse data and to create new knowledge. You’ll also work closely with your research supervisor, who will guide you on this journey.

This is one of the wonderful things about our discipline: sociology give you the freedom to explore issues that are important to you! Your degree will give you the skills to turn your interests into research topics and to get a deep understanding of issues that really matter, both to you and to society.

Getting under the surface

Sociology is a broad field. There are limitless social issues to explore, and just as many ways of exploring them. At York, we believe there's no wrong way to look at the world. What we focus on is giving you skills to critically understand the relationships, structures and changes that shape our lives.

In my research, I adopt a ‘phenomenological’ perspective – focusing on our immediate, bodily experience of the world, and everyday relationships with people, places and technologies. For me, this means looking at how we perform gender, understand our sexual desires and identities, and how these are shaped by patterns of power and inequality in our worldly interactions.

This might sound quite abstract, but on this basis, the next step is to think about possibilities for doing things differently, resisting limitations on diverse ways of being and living. This is something I try to action by working with LGBTQ+ organisations.

Expanding horizons

The amazing thing about Sociology at York is that we’ve got people who cover so many topics. Depending on your degree, we’ve got modules on the power of algorithms, the criminal justice system, globalisation, social research methods and much more.

You’ll also have access to modules in the School for Business and Society and the Department of Computer Science.

Getting a degree is a huge achievement, and something to be really proud of – but studying Sociology is also so much more. Studying sociology is transformative; it'll provide new ways of thinking about the world, and tools for challenging power and inequality.

This is the start of an exciting journey. Please get in touch if you want to know more about us – we're always happy to talk to prospective students, and are really looking forward to meeting you!