YEARS
50 SCHOOL OF APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES
CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Foreword 04 Origins of the Department 06 Sociology at Durham 10 EARLY YEARS Professor John Rex 1925 -2011 12 Professor Philip Abrams 1933 -1981 14 Professor Stanley Cohen 1942 - 2013 16 Benwell Community Development Project 18 Links with the Community: Examining Social Change 19 Richard Adams, BA Social Theory and Administration, 1969 20 Claire and Lucy Cordell 22 1980s... Ruth First 1925-1982 24 Miners’ Strikes 28 Margareta Kern: Miners’ Strikes Retrospective 30 THE DEPARTMENT TODAY Criminology at Durham 32 Sport at Durham 36 Community and Youth Work at Durham 38 Social Work at Durham 42 Centre for Methodological Research in the Social Sciences 46 The Centre for Sex, Gender and Sexualities (CSGS) 48 Centre for Social and Community Action 50 Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse (CRIVA) 52
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FOREWORD Welcome to this record of our 50 years in teaching and research sociology and social policy.
BELOW: Linda McKie. RIGHT: School of Applied Social Sciences Staff.
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In the following pages you can read of our origins, early years and strong links with Durham University Colleges, UK and International Learned Societies, regional projects and networks. Staff and student alumni have shared reminiscences too, and photos provide a visual record of departed key figures John Rex, Philip Abrams, Stan Cohen and Ruth First. Across our history, the socio-economic fortunes of the region have impacted on our research and education - the community development movement and projects of the 1960s and 1970s, the miners’ strikes of the early 1980s and the impact of recession from 2008. As the role of women changed across the 50 years, so too have the activities of communities and attitudes to gender, violence, relationships and families. The interweaving of social, economic and political changes is reflected by the growth in our Masters programmes, professional
qualifications in Community and Youth Work and Social Work, and International Social Work, Criminology and Research Methods. We also offer major undergraduate programmes in Sociology, Criminology and Sport and Physical Activity. Sociology and Criminology have been taught across the 50 years with education and research in sport reaching its 20th anniversary in 2016/17. Many of our alumni have made an impact in charities, government, business and higher education. A number of our PhD graduates are intellectual leaders in the social sciences and senior staff in universities. Current and former colleagues are developing ideas and projects relevant to welfare, work and social issues, supporting and teaching the next generation of researchers, and continuing to work with a critical focus on the society and world in which we live. Working beyond our 50th anniversary are the four
interdisciplinary centres: The Centre for Methodological Research in the Social Sciences; The Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse; The Centre for Sex, Gender and Sexualities and The Centre for Social Justice and Community Action. Their origins, history and future plans can be found towards the end of this booklet.
As we plan for activities beyond our 50th year, we remain committed to the interests and values on which the School was established and grew. I hope the contents of this booklet will resonate with your experiences of social sciences in Durham and bring our history and future plans to the attention of a
new and wider audience. We are pleased to hear from alumni and readers. Your memories, thoughts and ideas are welcome. You can contact us at sass.enquiries@ durham.ac.uk Professor Linda McKie Head of School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University
“Across our history, the socio-economic fortunes of the region have impacted on our research and education.� INTRODUCTION | Page 05
THE ORIGINS OF THE DEPARTMENT Sociology at Durham celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
BELOW: Robert Moore in his Durham Office.
In 1964, Durham University announced the establishment of a Department of Social Theory and Institutions. The formation of this new Department came at a time where the University was considering its future expansion and the scope for the delivery of new degree programmes. At its meeting in February 1964, the University Senate agreed that this new department would come into being once the new senior academic in this area was in post. Professor John Rex was appointed in October 1964, and the Department was established as a unit within the Faculty of Arts. Prior to this point, the University had delivered a BA in Social Studies as part of a Department of the same name which comprised staff with academic interests in Politics, Economics, Law and Social Administration. Roger Hood and (from 1st October 1963) Peter Kaim Caudle, both staff from
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the former Department of Social Studies who had been appointed initialy as lecturers in Social Administration, joined John Rex to become the core academic staff in the new Department. Later in the Department’s first academic year, Robert Moore was appointed as Lecturer in Social Theory and Institutions. The decision to form this new Board of Studies was taken concurrently with a decision to form Boards of Studies in Politics, Economics, Law and Anthropology, and in many ways marked the beginning of the significant expansion of the Social Sciences at Durham. However, the University had actually been reticent to develop Sociology. The committee which considered the formation of the Department indicated that it was ‘not satisfied that sociology in its present state of development as a University discipline was a suitable subject for undergraduate courses [and] felt unable to recommend
the introduction of courses in Sociology as such’. (This was notwithstanding notable advocacy for the subject from Professor Morris Jones of Politics and a persuasive paper by Roger Hood.) Yet upon formation of the Department around these new staff, there was an evident shift in attitude. Within his first term in
post, John Rex was asked by the Vice-Chancellor to deliver a series of lectures as part of the University’s General Lecture Series. Within the second year of the Department’s existence, modules in ‘Sociological Theory’, ‘Criminology’ and ‘Social Research Methods’ were offered together with specialisms in Sociology of Education, Industrial
Sociology and Political Sociology. The interest in the discipline from within the student body was evident from the number of students registering for honours level study in areas within the Board of Studies. This precipitated a call from John Rex for additional staff to meet the demand.
“At its meeting in February 1964, the University Senate agreed that this new department would come into being once the new senior academic in this area was in post.”
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“Today, Sociology and Social Policy are situated within what is now Durham’s School of Applied Social Sciences.”
By 1966, the Department had appointed Richard Brown as an additional Lecturer in Sociology, while Robert Moore was now identified in the Calendar also as a Lecturer in Sociology. Joint Honours Programmes with Politics, Economics and Law were available as options for which candidates could matriculate. Robert Moore, now Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Liverpool, recalls that the fundamental commitment of the Department, and in particular of John Rex, was to what we would now think of as widening access. There was a tangible commitment to recruiting and engaging students from across the North East, and the initial cohorts were evidently a highly diverse student body.
By the following year, additional appointments had been made, notably Gavin Williams, Peter Lassman and Stan Cohen, and the Department was offering Single Honours degrees in Sociology for the first time. These still run today as an integral part of the School of Applied Social Sciences. Today, Sociology and Social Policy are situated within what is now Durham’s School of Applied Social Sciences, formed in 2004 in the context of a reorganisation of the University. This led to the School today teaching and researching in the areas of Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy, Social Work, Community and Youth Work and Sport.
“It was a turning point in my life. The three years I spent in Durham had an impact on my career, broadened my prospects and enriched my sociological knowledge. I still visit Durham every time I visit England.” Professor Baqer Alnajar - Professor of Sociology at Bahrain University (Sociology PhD, 1983)
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SOCIOLOGY AT DURHAM “My sociology degree not only enabled me to forge a career but was instrumental in allowing me to formulate social policy in housing for Glasgow City Council.” Tom Lucas, Sport Psychologist (Sociology, 1976)
RIGHT: Sociology staff at Durham today.
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Over the years, Sociology has expanded into other related fields. The school now covers a range of Applied Social Sciences Criminology, Sport, Social Work, Community and Youth Work. However, Sociology was its starting point and remains a key central reference point within the School. With sociologist Professor Linda McKie taking over as Head of School in the summer of 2014, Sociology at Durham remains a thriving discipline, which is both strengthened by, and provides strength to, its neighbouring disciplines within the School of Applied Social Sciences. Some of our most esteemed colleagues from those early days included figures key to the British Sociological Association (BSA) history. The founding Professor, John Rex, was succeeded by Philip Abrams, who was appointed to Chair in Sociology in 1971, where he remained for ten years until his death. Abrams and others engaged in those early
days as sociologists with key organisations with which we have gone on to develop significant relationships, for example working closely with the Home Office, Department of Health and Social Security, and local authorities and social organisations through the Benwell Community Development project. Abrams was elected to the BSA Executive Committee soon after receiving his position of Chair at Durham, and became editor in 1976. Following his death in 1981, the BSA Phillip Abrams Memorial Prize was established in his memory, and in 1989, this was won by Dick Hobbs, who later joined Durham University as a member of staff. ‘The prize winning book, Doing The Business, looking at working-class culture and policing in the East End of London, was representative of the work of a wider body of staff and students interested in the sociology of deviance – which has also included
Stan Cohen, Robin Williams and John Tierney, as well as a strong cohort of postgraduate researchers. The editorship of Sociology has twice been held at Durham – first by Philip Abrams in its early days and more recently by David Byrne and Steph Lawler between 2003-2006. The journal, History of the Human Sciences, founded in 1988, emerged from an interdisciplinary research group at Durham, with its founding
editorial team including Durham sociologists, Irving Velody and Robin Williams. Today, Durham University’s School of Applied Social Sciences cuts across disciplinary boundaries, with its research specialisms centred around Social Justice and Community Action, Violence and Abuse, and Sex Gender and Sexualities. Looking forward to the next stage, we launched a new Centre for Methodological
Research in the Social Sciences in December 2014, led by Tiago Moreira and David Byrne (who first joined Durham University in 1970). With a thriving postgraduate population that is integrated into the core work of the school, we are using this year to take stock and reflect on the previous 50 years, while also being excited about the next 50 years of sociologically informed research at Durham.
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Professor John Rex 1925-2011 John Rex was the founding Professor of Durham’s Department of Social Theory and Institutions.
During his career, John chaired Departments at various universities and founded the Sociology Departments both at Durham and Warwick. Today he is remembered by former colleagues and students at Durham well-respected as a leading figure of British sociology. He is particularly well-known for his work in the field of race or ethnic relations in the United Kingdom, and as a theorist of social conflict.
Born in Port Elizabeth in South Africa, it was the social injustice and racial oppression which he witnessed there in his early days which was to stir his impulse to become a sociologist. During the Second World War, John served with the British Royal Navy, but returned to South Africa afterwards to complete his studies, graduating with a degree in Sociology and Philosophy from Rhodes University.
BELOW: John Rex at Durham.
Thereafter, John initially found work in Southern Rhodesia, yet so great was his sense of injustice in response to the racial oppression openly visible in South Africa at that time, that he soon decided to relocate, and emigrated to the United Kingdom. Once in Britain, his first academic post was at the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at Leeds University, where he was awarded a PhD for his thesis entitled ‘The Methodology of Social
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Science – A Philosophic and Critical Enquiry’. He then joined Leeds University’s Department of Social Studies, where he wrote his first book, Key Problems in Sociological Theory (1961), drawing on the teachings of Max Weber and focused on the methodology of Social Science. Thereafter, he moved to Birmingham University for two years, before arriving in Durham to found the Department of Social Theory and Institutions in October 1964, where he remained until 1970. John’s major area of expertise was race relations in the United Kingdom, and, written in collaboration with Robert Moore, his book on race relations in Birmingham, Race, Community and Conflict: a Study of Sparkbrook (1967) was widely lauded for its distinctive theoretical approach. Through his work,
he realised how troubled race relations were in Birmingham at that time, and predicted that unless suitable policies were set in place, serious clashes might arise. Unfortunately on this front, he was to be proved all too correct. After his time at Durham, John went on to take up posts at Warwick (1970–79 and 1984–90), Aston (1979– 84), Toronto (1974–75), Cape Town (1991) and New York (1996). He was also a member of the UNESCO International Experts’ Committee on Racism and Race Prejudice (1967) and president of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Racial and Ethnic Minorities (1974–82). In recognition of his work, John was appointed as Director of the SSRC Research Unit on Race
Relations, and his books include Colonial Immigrants in a British City: A Class Analysis (with Sally Tomlison, 1979); Race Relations in Sociological Theory (1983); The Ghetto and the Underclass (1987); Ethnic Minorities and the Modern Nation State (1996). The last volume he published in this area was Governance in Multicultural Societies (2004, co-edited with Gurharpal Singh). From the many testimonials of alumni and staff at Durham and beyond, it is evident that John was highly respected by both colleagues and students for his integrity and fair-mindedness, and he received many collaborative research invitations from others throughout his career. As a teacher, he was to inspire many students to take up Sociology, several of whom have since become well-known sociologists in their own right.
“As well as gaining knowledge on health and social care, I gained research skills that have helped enormously with my current work.” Catherine Johnson, Senior Public Health Advisor (Sociology and Social Policy, 1999)
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Professor Philip Abrams 1933-1981 Philip Abrams was Professor of Sociology at the Durham University from 1971 until his untimely death in 1981.
BELOW: Philip Abrams.
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Philip took a first in both parts of the Cambridge History Tripos, and after six years as a research student and research fellow at Peterhouse, was awarded a PhD in 1961 for his study of John Locke as a Conservative. Three years later, he published a critical evaluation of Locke, and it seemed at the time as if he was set for a career as a promising historian. However, during these early years, Philip developed a keen interest in Sociology, and in particular Political Sociology, and following his time at Peterhouse, his studies in this area took him to the London School of Economics, where he worked as an Assistant Lecturer in Sociology. He then returned to Cambridge in 1962 as a Sociology lecturer in Economics and Politics. He played a major role there in establishing a new Social and Political Sciences Tripos in the face of much opposition, and also published papers on a wide variety of topics,
including Political Sociology, Popular Culture, Military Sociology and the History of Social Research in Britain. At Durham, his varied range of interests was clearly evident through the huge amount of research which he undertook. He was closely involved with the Home Office and the Benwell Community Development project, and directed research funded by the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust in both Family Sociology (Communes, Sociology and Society) and the Social Policy of Community Care. His final work concerned patterns of neighbourhood care in the community and was funded and supported by the Department of Health and Social Security and the Social Science Research Council. He served as Editor of the Social Science Research Council from 1976 onwards and was also an active player within the British Sociological
Association (BSA) and the Association for the Teaching of Social Science. According to the BSA, Philip’s work contributed substantially to Sociology and Social Policy research in Britain during his lifetime, and he is remembered particularly for the encouragement
and assistance which he readily gave to many young sociologists at the start of their careers. After his death, in recognition of his commitment to Sociology, the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize was established in his honour, and is awarded today for the best first and sole-authored
book within the discipline of Sociology. The Undergraduate Sociology Programme at Durham also continues to award a Philip Abrams Annual Prize to this day in recognition of the highest achieving dissertation from an undergraduate student.
“My time at Durham gave me the confidence to do the variety of things that I have devoted my life to. I was in contact with a number of inspirational people (particularly the late Ruth First and Huw Beynon) who showed me that it was possible to strive for what I had believed was unattainable for people like me (I came to study in Durham shortly after I finished as a soldier). For the first time in my life Durham gave me the opportunity to mix with people I had never come across before. For that I am grateful, but also for what I consider to be the high quality of the education I received. I look back with a great deal of fondness at my time in Durham.” Jim Fox, former Head of RE/PSHE & Citizenship, Retired (BA Hons, Sociology, 1978)
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Professor Stan Cohen 1942-2013 Stan Cohen lectured at Durham University from 1967-72, before going on to Essex as Senior Lecturer and, from 1974, Professor.
RIGHT: Stan Cohen and Laurie Taylor (left) reminisce about teaching in Durham.
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Having been born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Stan studied Sociology at the University of Witwatersrand, before coming to Britain in 1963, initially working as a social worker before joining LSE to complete a PhD in Sociology.
emotional management as its theme. The result of many visits to Durham Prison and direct interaction with the inmates, the book examined how those sentenced to a lifetime in prison attempted to preserve their identity and prevent physical and mental deterioration.
One of his most influential works was Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), which he wrote as a study into society’s and the media’s reactions to the ‘mods and rockers’ of the 1960s. In this work, Stan was credited with inventing the term ‘moral panic’, and today this book is widely regarded by British criminologists as having helped to widen the scope of Criminology as a whole to include the Sociology of Crime and Social Control.
Stan’s best known writing internationally was an extended work on deviance and social control, Visions of Social Control (1985). Another well-respected work, States of Denial (2001), focused particularly on the denial of emotion within society, and the many personal and political ways in which individuals avoid uncomfortable realities around them such as poverty, suffering and injustice.
During his time at Durham, Stan collaborated with Laurie Taylor to study life in the maximum-security wing in Durham Prison. The book they produced was entitled Psychological Survival (1972), and took
As a person, Stan was passionate about human rights, which led him into active conflict with the apartheid regime in his native South Africa. Similarly, whilst at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1981-95), he
led a major inquiry into the Israeli army’s use of torture in the occupied territories. He also went on play a central role 2000 in establishing the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics, and became
Professor of Sociology at LSE from 1995-2005. At Durham, Stan Cohen is remembered by many for his humour, both as a person and within his writing, and for the enormous inspiration he gave to students through
his teaching and supervision alike. Strange when one considers that according to Laurie, his anarchic dislike of institutions meant that Stan was always something of an unwilling academic himself!
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BENWELL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT Judith Green, Honorary Research Fellow – University of Northumbria, recalls the research of the department in the region:
During the 1970s, Durham University’s Department of Sociology hosted the research arm of the Benwell Community Development Project (CDP). Seen as Britain’s answer to the American War on Poverty, this was one of 12 experimental projects set up by the Home Office in localities across Britain that had been identified as experiencing multiple deprivation. Each local project had an action team employed by the local authority and a research team employed by a local academic institution. The Benwell project had a team of up to four researchers who worked out of shopfront premises in the heart of Benwell, an urban neighbourhood in the west end of Newcastle. Research advice and support was provided by an advisory group chaired by the then Professor Philip Abrams, and including, among others, Richard Brown and Bob Roshier.
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Over the five years of the project’s life, the research team worked alongside the action team to carry out a programme of detailed research into the changing local economy, housing market and other factors impacting on the local community, and to devise strategies for change. One of the Community Development workers on this project was Gary Craig, who now holds a Professorial appointment within the School. The varied output of publications ranged from detailed analyses of subjects such as the private housing market or changes in retailing to short illustrated pamphlets targeted at a local audience focusing on specific issues or briefing papers for local campaigns such as those against particular factory closures. The Benwell project was also a major contributor to a series of inter-project reports written jointly with several of the other CDPs. A key theme of the projects’ work was that the causes of unemployment,
poverty and other aspects of deprivation were to be found not in the failures of individuals and families or the weaknesses of local communities but in wider economic, social and policy factors. In the process, CDP helped to draw attention to the significance of the processes
of de-industrialisation and globalisation which were beginning to ravage older industrial areas but were little understood or researched at the time. It also contributed to the contemporary debate about state intervention in industry.
However, this sort of analysis did not find favour with the Home Office, who were anticipating findings more in line with the current idea of a ‘cycle of poverty’, and they declined to extend or repeat the experiment when it came to an end.
LINKS WITH THE COMMUNITY: EXAMINING SOCIAL CHANGE Professor David Byrne When I started working in Durham in September 1970, colleagues were very much engaged with social change in the North East of England. Coal mining was being run down in the older smaller pits. The programme of ‘industrial diversification’ continued a policy which dated back to the 1930s resulting in the growth in industrial employment by women in areas where this was new. Jane and Richard Brown later carried out an important oral history project which drew on the memories of the women who worked in the enormous munitions plant on the site which became Newton Aycliffe New Town, as well as women who worked during the war
in the region’s shipyards. In the early years, Richard directed an important study of the nature of work in the shipyards as they changed under the impact of what we would now call globalisation. One area undergoing particularly rapid change was Seaton Valley in South East Northumberland, where pits were closing and the New Town of Killingworth was being developed by the County Council. Richard Brown and Jim Cousins, funded through the Rowntree Research Project, explored this as part of a larger programme of work directed towards understanding the nature of regionalism and the role of regional elites.
This process of exploring the consequences and costs of industrial change was to be a central concern of the two North East Community Development Projects in the later 1970s. I left Durham to be Research Director of North Shields CDP based in the then Newcastle Polytechnic but we always worked in collaboration with the Benwell CDP based in Durham Sociology. The key focus was social change, and whilst by the 1970s we were well aware that things were changing in a profound way, I don’t think any of us anticipated the massive deindustrialisation which has changed one of the world’s oldest and most intensely industrial regions into such a very different place.
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Richard Adams, BA Social Theory and Administration, 1969 Alumnus Profile:
“Doing Sociology in Durham in the 60s, especially with John Rex, Robert Moore and Roger Hood, was immensely exciting. I couldn’t have had a better grounding for my subsequent work and I still frequently draw on ideas and understanding from that time.” Richard Adams is one of the Sociology Department’s best known alumni, being the founder of the UK-based Fairtrade organisation, Traidcraft.
BELOW: Richard Adams.
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In the 1960s, Richard came to Durham as an undergraduate to read Sociology. The degree awakened his deep interest in business and social international development, and while he initially embarked thereafter on a career in regional industrial development in the North East and Scotland, a working visit to examine the situation of small farmers in Gujurat, India, led him instead in a different direction.
In 1972, he set up an agricultural imports business called Agrofax, importing hundreds of tonnes of fruit and vegetables to the UK from small famers in India and Africa. Soon, this business expanded to importing crafts from rural communities in Bangladesh, following which he founded Tearcraft, which was to go on to become the marketing arm of the major UK relief and development charity, TEAR Fund. In 1979 Richard established a new independent company, called Traidcraft, to offer the first ‘alternative’ and sociallyorientated public share issue in the UK. Traidcraft now includes a wide range of products and continues to work with small and medium sized enterprises throughout the developing world. In 1989, Richard drafted initial proposals for what became the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation. In 1994, he founded and became Managing Director of the Creative Consumer Co-
operative, and from 2000 to 2004 he co-founded and developed the Warm Zones fuel poverty action areas scheme in conjunction with the UK government and major energy companies. Overall, Richard has spent much of his working life in the founding and development of several successful not-forprofit, community-owned, or co-operative enterprises that allow people to express constructive social and environmental values through
their work, spending or saving. The majority have been focussed on fair trade, the problems of social exclusion, international development and sustainability. In addition to his degree in Sociology, Richard now also holds degrees in Theology and Business and has a number of honorary doctorates and visiting fellowships from British universities. In 2006, he was listed by the Independent newspaper
as one of the top 50 people in the UK who had had most impact in “making the world a better place” for his practical development of the concept of ethical shopping. Until recently the chair of Newcastle and North Tyneside Community Health NHS, since 2001 Richard has been a member of the European Union’s Economic and Social Committee where he specialises in energy, ethical and environmental issues. He also co-chairs the European Nuclear Energy Forum.
OTHER ALUMNI TOP TO BOTTOM/LEFT TO RIGHT: Andrew McBride - BA Sport Health and Exercise 2006, Andy Render - MA Comunity Studies 2000, Baqer Salman Alnajjar - Doctor of Philosophy 1983, Christian Kerr - Master of Social Work 2013, David Gray - BA Sociology 1981- Emily Oliver - BA Sociology 2003, Joanna Caldwell - BA Sociology 2000, Jonathan Baynard BA Sociology 1980, Linda Grant - BA Sociology 2002, Luke Williams - MA Social Research Methods (Sociology) 2006, Martin Vogel - BA Sociology 1983, Mary Rose Gregg - MA DipSW 1997, Nancy Radford - BA Sociology and Social Administration 1975, Nilay Cabuk - Doctor of Philosophy 1994, Rebecca Balchin - BA Sociology 2010, Tanyaradzwa Macheka Mujeka Master of Social Work 2011.
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Claire and Lucy Cordell Alumni Profile:
RIGHT: Claire Cordell (née Phillipson) Sociology and Social Administration student 1977-1980, rowing on the River Wear with her future husband. BELOW: Lucy Cordell, BA Criminology graduate (2012) and MSc Criminal Justice student 2014/15, being awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship for Academic Excellence in 2012.
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Over the past 50 years, the Department has shaped the lives of generations of graduates. Here, Lucy Cordell, BA Criminology graduate (2012) and MSc Criminal Justice student 2014/15, recalls the experiences of her late mother Claire (BA Sociology and Social Administration 1980): Claire attended Durham University at St John’s College and studied Sociology and Social Administration between 1977 and 1980. She was the first student studying this degree to be awarded a First Class honours degree, a testament to her great intelligence and unwavering dedication to her field of study. After graduation, she completed a CQSW at Newcastle University with a thesis on neo-natal deaths. In 1984, she joined
Newcastle Social Services as a childcare social worker. Her team manager described her in a reference as an incredibly hard working professional and a “tower of strength” within the team, as she always worked efficiently and effectively and remained calm and level headed in a crisis. Between 1997 and 2004, Claire was team manager of an older person’s team in Gosforth. Despite suffering from muscular dystrophy, she admirably never let it limit her, working longer hours to ensure she could complete the same amount of work as her colleagues! After her death from breast cancer on the 9th June 2004, many of her colleagues described Claire as their greatest inspiration, who taught them self-belief and how to have courage. It is the greatest honour and privilege to have had her as a mother. She was completely devoted to my sister and I, loving us selflessly and unconditionally.
Her incredible dedication to her education and career provided me with the motivation and determination to work exceptionally hard in my own education and career. This led to me graduating from Durham with a First Class honours degree in Criminology, an achievement I am extremely proud of. I had an incredible experience at Durham and thoroughly
enjoyed my degree. I was also involved in fundraising for DUCK and supported the work of SASS by being a course representative for 2 years and an open day volunteer for the department for 3 years. My passion for fundraising and providing help and support to others was inspired by Claire and her
approach to life. She was the most selfless, courageous, compassionate, endlessly patient and considerate person I have ever known and my greatest inspiration. Her loss brought the deepest sorrow, yet the comforting knowledge that her legacy and love lives on within me and all who knew and loved her.
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Ruth First 1925-1982 The Ruth First Educational Trust is named after the journalist, writer, anti-apartheid campaigner and Durham University Sociology lecturer.
BELOW: Ruth First.
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The Ruth First Trust exists to enable southern African students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds to undertake postgraduate study at the University of Durham. Heloise Ruth First was born in 1925 in Johannesburg, South Africa. She studied Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she joined the communist party and founded a multi-racial students’ group. After graduating, she embarked on an extraordinary career that combined fearless investigative journalism, incisive sociological research, imaginative writing and progressive political activism in exposing injustice and defending human rights. She investigated labour issues and living conditions in South Africa, African nationalist and protest politics, military intervention in the politics of African and Arab countries, and foreign investment in South Africa. She also
acted as a consultant and researcher for the United Nations on human rights and on political and economic issues in southern Africa. Alongside her husband Joe Slovo, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and 150 others, she was a defendant in the notorious Treason Trial of 1956, in which all were eventually acquitted. She was later banned from working as a journalist in South Africa, and in 1963 she was arrested and held in solitary confinement for 117 days. This experience gave rise to her best-known book, One Hundred and Seventeen Days (Penguin, 1965; reissued by Little, Brown in 2010), later turned into a television play in which she played herself. Ruth came to live in London in 1964 with her three daughters, and worked as an independent researcher and writer on commissions for publishers and international bodies, travelling widely in African and Arab countries. She began to participate in
academic seminars in Britain and Holland, and in 197273 was Simon Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. She was appointed to a lectureship in Sociology at the University of Durham in 1973, where she continued to develop her research and infused her teaching with her practical experience and passionate commitment to social justice. As well as her own publications, Ruth also worked with other prominent anti-apartheid campaigners as researcher and editor for their books: Mandela’s No Easy Walk to Freedom (1967), Mbeki’s The Peasant’s Revolt (1967) and Oginga Odinga’s Not Yet Uhuru (1967). She was on extended leave from Durham working as Director of the Centre for African Studies at Eduardo Mondlane University in
Maputo, Mozambique, when she was killed by a bomb concealed by the South African police in a parcel originally sent by a UN agency. One of the policemen responsible claimed in his application for amnesty in 1998 that the parcel had been addressed to Joe Slovo (who was military leader of the ANC at the time), but in any case admitted under questioning that “it made absolutely no difference to me whether I killed Joe Slovo or Ruth First”. In June 2000, Craig Williamson and Roger Raven were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty committee for the murder of Ruth First and the attempted murder of Joe Slovo, as well as for other murders. Two of Ruth and Joe’s daughters have produced
moving accounts of their family history. Shawn Slovo wrote the screenplay for the successful film A World Apart (1988, directed by Chris Menges), and in 1997 Gillian published Every Secret Thing (Little, Brown), which tells the story of their childhood in the shadow of their parents’ political activity. Gillian’s novel Red Dust (Virago, 2000) turns her experience of witnessing the confessions of her mother’s murderers into a confrontation between a torturer and his victims before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Robyn Slovo is a TV and film producer. She produced Catch a Fire (2006, directed by Phillip Noyce), a political thriller set in South Africa in the 1980s based on the true story of Patrick Chamusso. Shawn wrote the screenplay for this film, and Robyn played the role of their mother.
“I was taught to think, analyse and be much more aware of aspects of life that did not occur to me as a ‘middle class’ school girl. I was also challenged in my assumptions, and really enjoyed the seminar system which introduced me to group discussions, arguments and ideas” Angela Hooper née Black, career in Social Services, Retired (Social Theory and Administration, 1969)
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The Ruth First Papers Project has created a digital archive of a selection of Ruth’s writings, which is held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Ruth was remembered by Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party, in his speech to the Labour Party conference on 2 October 2012: “Every upbringing is special, and mine was special because of the place of politics within it. When I was 12 years old, I met a South African friend of my parents. Her name was Ruth First. The image I remember is of somebody vivacious, full of life, full of laughter. And then I remember a few months later, coming down to breakfast and seeing my mum in tears, because Ruth First had been murdered by a letter bomb from the South African secret police – murdered for being part of
the anti-apartheid movement. Now I didn’t understand the ins and outs of it, but I was shocked, I was angry. I knew that wasn’t the way the world was meant to be. I knew I had a duty to do something about it. It is this upbringing that has made me who I am.” Diana Collecott shared a house with Ruth in Durham in the 1970s. She remembers: “Ruth First was a completely focussed activist, analyst, researcher and writer, journalist and teacher. She was also a warm, humane, beautiful woman and a firm friend. “When I first met Ruth in 1975, she didn’t fit my idea of a leftist intellectual. Despite working intensively, she was very stylish! This was Durham in the 70s, not Johannesburg in the 50s, so she didn’t maintain the bandbox perfection of a lawyer’s wife and
newspaper editor doubling as a dangerous revolutionary. But whatever her weekend in London held – interviews with the BBC, meetings with politicians and publishers, gatherings to address, reports to be written – her initial appointment at 9 am on Saturday was at the hairdresser’s! “Ruth was an excellent cook and loved to entertain – her home in South Africa had been a multiracial meetingplace. But she had one rule in the kitchen – no dish should take longer than half-an-hour to prepare – and those dishes were delicious! For two years, separated by one that Ruth spent in Africa, we shared a small house in Mavin Street, and she was the easiest housemate because of her clarity, tolerance and sense of humour.”
“So many factors have played a role in getting me to where I am today. My undergraduate degree at Durham was special, I met wonderful people and really enjoyed my course. Thank you Durham!” Anna Karmandarian, M&E Position at USAID (Combined Social Sciences: Sociology, Middle Eastern Studies, Management, 2003)
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The Ruth First Scholarship
The 2014-15 Ruth First Scholarship has been awarded to Dave Mankhokwe Namusanya from Malawi, who is taking an MA in Community and Youth Work in the School of Applied Social Sciences.
“My interest in the Community and Youth Work mostly stems from the background of where I am coming from. Currently, Malawi is in the process of the developing and the approach is to take development from the community level. At the same time, we are faced with the challenge of an increase in the youth population yet at the same time there are hardly any resources to support them. Thus, it is my belief that by studying this programme I will have a chance to play a part in the development of my country and assist in formulating solutions to the challenges. With the Ruth First Education Trust scholarship, I have
been granted the chance to get a decent education, learn about other cultures and experience a new environment; things which, without the scholarship, I could not attain.” Dave Namusanya
“My interest in the Community and Youth Work mostly stems from the background of where I am coming from.”
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MINERS’ STRIKES The Miners’ Strikes during the 1980s had a considerable sociological impact on the North East region, which significantly affected the work of those at the Department during this time.
BELOW: Huw Beynon.
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Professor Huw Beynon, an honorary Doctor of Letters and distinguished industrial sociologist of international repute, joined Durham University in 1976 and spent the next ten years at the Department. Once in Durham, he researched the mining trade unions and communities, which led to his involvement in contesting the Government’s policy of pit closures. He recollects: “After a year teaching at the University of Southern Illinois where I linked up with its Coal Research Centre, I took up a post at Durham University in early 1976 and remained there for almost 12 years. This was a momentous period in the political economy of the UK and one that was to have a profound effect on my research. It was familiar territory – Durham’s history and culture had much in common with the valleys of south Wales, and both areas were experiencing the rapid
closure of manufacturing plants, a process that ended with the wholesale closure of the coal mining industry. I obtained funding from the ESRC to investigate these changes, both on the Durham coalfield and on Tyneside. “Previously, industrial sociologists had, to some extent, taken the industrial landscape for granted. In Working for Ford, I had written that “the fact it was Liverpool mattered, the fact that it was the Ford Motor Company mattered more” to the study of the factory. The closure of large manufacturing plants across the engineering and textile industries, followed by the ending of steel making at Consett and coal mining across the north east extended this approach. It made questions about the location and creation of jobs and employment more salient, and with it issues of power and the place of “the local” in a globalising economy.
“This developed alongside my long and close collaboration with Ray Hudson. It also accentuated the historical dimension of my work, and I became especially interested in the history of the coal mining industry and the fact that in Durham, a place where society and politics
were so intimately related to the coal, the industry was allowed to close. The book I wrote with Terry Austrin – Masters and Servants: Class and Patronage in the Making of a Labour Organisation – is the best illustration of this style of work.
“In the 1980s, as Government pressure on the coal industry intensified, I worked closely with the coal mining trades unions and local communities in seeking to reveal the savage costs that would follow from colliery closures. Along with colleagues I estimated the impact of such coal mine closures upon future employment prospects. I’m afraid that our grim predications were born out in reality”. Some of this is recorded in A Tale of Two Industries (with Ray Hudson and David Sadler). www.huwbeynon.com Huw Beynon is Director of the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research (WISERD) and a leading academic within the school of social sciences at Cardiff University. His main theoretical interests relate to sociology and organisational change with particular reference to occupational change and issues of regional regeneration. Huw Beynon and Keith Pattison’s August ’84 Easington is available online at the following location: huwbeynon.files.wordpress. com/2014/03/easington-841.pdf
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Artist Margareta Kern undertook a residency post at the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University in 2012.
“The project was enabled by an award from the Leverhulme Artist in Residence grant that was held jointly by Prof. Maggie O’Neill and Margareta Kern.”
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MARGARETA KERN: MINERS’ STRIKES RETROSPECTIVE This project was enabled by an award from the Leverhulme Trust Artist in Residence grant that was held jointly by Professor Maggie O’Neill and Margareta Kern. Margareta recalls:
residence has created a space for me to engage in more depth with the issues of memory, archiving and historicising radical politics and its representation and contestation on screen.
“My residency in Durham was concerned with the miners’ strike in 1984/85, as a historical, social and cultural event that a period of economic and social upheaval and the rise of Thatcherism engendered. I felt compelled to re-visit the miners’ strike, as I found there to be many resemblances to the recent anti-cuts protests, occupations and strikes against the cuts that are aggressively pushed through by the current conservative government. More specifically, as an artist, I’ve continued exploring the relationship of participatory research, performance and theatre, to experimental and documentary film-making, and the political spaces and agencies created in that process. The time in
“This engagement manifested through (re) search of/for the miners campaign video tapes made as part of the Film and Video Workshop movement in the 1980s by the film co-operatives in collaboration with the miners and women action groups; through developing participatory project with the working group and through my collaboration with Professor Maggie O’Neill which enabled me the space to reflect on the process of residency.” These photos are of a theatre workshop with the working group that was part of the residency, as well as two public events. For more information visit www.margaretakern.com
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CRIMINOLOGY AT DURHAM Teaching and Research on Crime and Deviance has been core to the work of the School throughout its 50 years.
RIGHT: Criminology staff at Durham today.
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The topic of Crime and Deviance was first taught in the Department by Bob Roshier in the 1960s. He was soon followed by Stan Cohen, who worked at Durham between 1967 and 1972, during which time he wrote the groundbreaking books Folk Devils and Moral Panics (Cohen, 1972) and – with Laurie Taylor – Psychological Survival (Taylor and Cohen, 1972). These books remain on the curricula of Criminology degree programmes internationally. Laurie Taylor was working at the University of York at the time, and recalls how Stan Cohen phoned him soon after coming into post at Durham to ask if Laurie wanted to join him in giving some introductory lessons on Sociology to a class of prisoners in Durham Prison that John Smith had arranged. After a brief chat with the Governor, he recalls that they were escorted through a succession of locked and bolted steel doors and across an open area
patrolled by officer with dogs until they reached ‘E Wing’. Laurie told us: “It was only as we compared notes after taking our first seminars with a group of half-a-dozen inmates that we fully realised that our classes were not only being held in what was then regarded as the most secure part of the British prison system but were being attended by some of the most notorious prisoners in the country.” This teaching led to a study which allowed the prisoners to talk about what they saw as the effects of being locked away for up to twenty years, which was published as their co-authored book Psychological Survival. “Although Stan and I went on to work together for many years, we always remembered the manner in which our friendship and scholarly co-operation had only come about as a result of an initiative from the University of Durham.”
By the late 1980s and 1990s, the sociological study of crime and deviance had developed into a critical strength, with academics including Professor Dick Hobbs, Professor Robin Williams, John Tierney, and Professor Ian Taylor (Tierney and Taylor had also previously studied at Durham). A large number of research postgraduates have also gone on to become established criminologists in a range of institutions (e.g. Rob MacDonald, Simon Winlow, Stuart Lister, Phil Hadfield, Louise Westmarland) including back
at Durham. Dr Kate O’Brien, Dr Mick McManus, Dr Chris Lawless, Dr Hannah King and Dr Ivan Hill all studied at Durham in the 1990s/2000s and now teach and research Criminology at Durham. John Tierney and Professor Nicole Westmarland launched our BA Criminology degree in 2007, and this was followed by an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice in 2011, led by Professor Maggie O’Neill. As we celebrate our 50th anniversary, we have a strong Criminology team including:
Dr Ivan Hill, Professor Maggie O’Neill, Professor Nicole Westmarland, Professor David Wall, Dr Hannah King, Dr Alison Jobe, Professor Fiona Measham, Dr Kate O’Brien, Dr Chris Lawless, and Dr Mick McManus. We are unusual amongst Criminology teams to have a ratio of three females to one male professor. And it is as we reach 50 that we have started to go into prisons in Durham again to teach. Following in the footsteps of Laurie Taylor, who taught sociology classes in E-Wing, HMP Durham during the late 1960s,
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“By the late 1980s and 1990s the sociological study of Crime and Deviance had developed into a critical strength.”
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Criminology staff in SASS are currently involved in delivering a new and exciting prison-based Criminology teaching programme behind the same prison walls. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange programme was originally developed by Lori Pompa, based at Temple University, Philadelphia in 1997 and has since seen over 10,000 students go through the programme in the USA. Durham University is the first institution in Europe to offer the programme. In partnership with HMP Durham and HMP Frankland
undergraduate Criminology students in the School are joint together with equal numbers of inmates currently serving custodial sentences as co-students to study a 10-week long course in criminal justice. The InsideOut programme is designed to break down barriers and prejudices and provide ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ students with a unique opportunity to study together as peers behind the prison walls. For ‘outside’ students, many of whom will go on to pursue careers in criminal justice
and related fields, and some of whom have never entered a prison, the programme allows them to learn about crime and justice in a profoundly different way. For ‘inside’ students, those serving prison sentences, the programme encourages them to recognise their capacities as agents of change in their own lives as well as in broader society, and for many, helps rekindle their intellectual imaginations and ambitions, potentially enhancing further education, training and employability upon release.
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SPORT AT DURHAM “Excellent academic preparation that I use daily in my research. The breadth of the course has ensured that I am able to look across a range of factors when presenting to players, and the lecturers were superb.” Andrew McBride, New Zealand Football Association High Performance (BA Hons in Sport, Health and Exercise, 2006)
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From Pitch-Side to Policy-Making: A Brief History of the Study of Sport at Durham University. In 1996, Dr Peter Warburton, as Chair of the Board of Studies and Director of Sport within the School of Education, welcomed the first cohort of the ‘BA Sport in the Community’ degree course (affectionately known as SIC). Following early success, in 1999, a second BA in Sport, Health and Exercise (SHE), was launched. With input from sociologists, physiologists, psychologists, and political scientists, Sport at Durham quickly developed a reputation for an innovative, applied, and research-led approach. Students and staff have always been encouraged to push both intellectual and personal boundaries here; for example, cohorts would traditionally spend two and a half days completing outdoor and adventurous
activities at Coniston in the Lake District, examining theories of teambuilding and performance under pressure ‘in the field’. Whilst moving from its original home in Education to the School of Health in 1996, and to Applied Social Sciences in 2004, Sport at Durham has attracted contributions from worldleading researchers including Professors Catherine Palmer, Barry Drust, Jim McKay, Richard Giulianotti, Greg Atkinson, John Hughson and Dr Laura Hills. Since its early days, the programme has expanded to encompass ‘Sport, Exercise and Physical Activity’, reflecting the growing diversity of research expertise within the group, currently including Professor David Eccles, Dr Sue Bock, Dr Emily Oliver, Dr Martin Roderick, Dr Emma Poulton, Rob Cramb, Dr Iain Lindsey, Dr Stacey Pope and Dr Caroline Dodd-Reynolds.
Researchers within the Sport, Exercise and Physical Activity group now work closely with local, national and international organisations to inform policy and practice in terms of sport and community development, athlete training and welfare, health promotion, and addressing issues of inequality in these domains. The team
hosted the Political Studies Association’s ‘Sport, Politics and Policy’ conference on 7th-8th January 2015, and hope that this continues to showcase the unique approach to understanding the role of sport in society that Durham provides. As we approach our 20th year of Sport here at Durham in 2016, it is with great pride
that we can announce that the BA Sport, Exercise, and Physical Activity is the 1st ranked sport-related degree in the UK for 2014/15, and that, reflecting excellence in research, teaching, performance and outreach work, Durham is the Sunday Times Sports Univeristy of the Year for 2015.
“The team hosted the Political Studies Association’s ‘Sport, Politics and Policy’ conference on 7th-8th January 2015.”
TOP: The first graduating cohort Summer 1999 of the BA Sport in the Community. BOTTOM: Iain Lindsey, Emma Poulton, and Stacey Pope together with keynote speaker Barrie Houlihan at the ‘Sport, Politics and Policy’ conference 2015.
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COMMUNITY AND YOUTH WORK AT DURHAM Durham University has a long history of teaching and research in the field of Community and Youth Work.
Origins Professional education in youth work began at Durham in 1947, when the Ministry of Education established the first full-time university courses specifically for youth workers. Durham was amongst a small group of universities offering a year-long Certificate in Youth Leadership. The course had an intake of around 10 students, run by a single member of staff, Mrs Giles. There were three intakes on this early course at Durham, before the Ministry of Education ceased funding. Clearly a woman of considerable talents and energy, Mrs Giles was sent to the British Zone of Germany in 1948 to assist the Control Commission in setting up a youth service to replace the outlawed Hitler Youth. In 1960, government policy changed direction and once again, higher education institutions were encouraged to provide the bulk of professional
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education for youth work. By the early 1970s the National Association of Boys’ Clubs, which had been running a full-time course in Liverpool, approached Durham to take it over. John Dixon, Head of the Department of Extra-Mural Studies, agreed. Stephen Knight and Roger Cartledge were appointed as tutors, and with Carole Miles as secretary (later administrator) and Tim Wakeley from the National Association of Boys’ Clubs, the two-year Certificate in Community and Youth Work course commenced in 1975. Muriel Sawbridge joined a year later. Diana Gower (Part-time Tutor) and Angela Emerson (Secretary) completed the team, and both remained working in the School until recently. It was the only such course based in a university, as all others were located in teacher education colleges. Designed for 16 students a year, the course was very intensive, with high levels of staff-student contact time. For many years, in good youth work tradition, students and staff went on two week-long residentials,
often frequenting rather basic hostels in cold parts of Northumberland to engage in bracing outdoor activities and heated political debates. Muriel Sawbridge, who retired in 1992, remembers these early days very well: “The course represented a minor revolution for the University, particularly in its acceptance of students without formal entrance qualifications. The students, all of whom had to have experience in youth or community work, were by definition ‘mature’. My oldest student was 54, but the most memorable and typical in terms of motivation, was a woman who lived in Ashington. She travelled by bus to Durham every day, having provided for her children and shift-working husband. She was never late, produced work of a very good quality and demonstrated
considerable creativity in working with people. “We saw the ultimate purpose of Community and Youth Work as empowering disadvantaged people and communities using informal education methods to facilitate that process. It required commitment and empathy. My favourite example of the latter was a student who organised a camping trip on a piece of waste ground across the busy main road from the run-down estate where the participants lived. The reason was that the people involved found the countryside, with its lack of street lights and pavements, intimidating. It was a privilege to work with such students and staff.” Carole Miles also has fond memories of her time as administrator with the programme: “I believe Community and Youth Work was a unique
course, which opened up a totally new life to the students. I also believe we, both staff and students, were like a large family. Personally, I would not have missed my time working with them.” For many students, attending the course was a life-changing experience, as Malcolm Walker (Cert 1983, MA 1996), reflects: “It’s no overstatement to describe my experience at Durham in 198183 as life-changing. I entered the course with an enthusiasm for youth work, no academic experience and a pretty narrow view of the world. After two inspirational placements, a load of reading, brilliant residential field visits and the encouragement of tutors, I left the course in 1983, thoroughly convinced of the potential of community work to contribute to creating a fairer society.”
“My time at Durham was a great experience that I still have fond memories of all these years later. On a personal note, that is where I met my wife who was American, and this year we will be celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary.” Peter Benham, Discharge Co-ordinator at a Children’s Crisis Clinic in the USA (Community and Youth Work, 1979)
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Professionalisation and Integration into the University During the 1980s, Community and Youth Work began to professionalise, with the development of national systems of accreditation of courses, while universities became more interested in staff research profiles. Bill Williamson moved from Sociology and Social Policy to become Director of Adult and Continuing Education (formerly Extra-Mural Studies) in 1987. From this time, the Department, including Community and Youth Work, began to focus more attention on research. Sarah Banks also joined in 1987, starting a programme of research in professional ethics and community development. Masters’ degrees in Community Studies and Youth Studies were developed, linked with the taught postgraduate programmes in the Sociology and Social Policy Department. By the mid-1990s, the two-year Certificate (then outside the University framework for degrees) was transformed into a two-year Diploma of Higher Education, with the
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possibility of staying for a third year to do a BA. Pete Smith (replacing Roger Cartledge) and Umme Imam (replacing Muriel Sawbridge) joined in the 1990s, adding expertise in community enterprise and work with minority ethnic groups. A further step towards the integration of Community and Youth Work into the mainstream of the University was taken in 1996 when the programme moved from the Department of Adult and Continuing Education into Sociology and Social Policy. The addition of Tony Jeffs (1996) and Jean Spence (2000) further strengthened the team, bringing two highlyregarded youth work theorists with a focus on the history of community and youth work, youth policy and women’s and girls’ work. They were founding members of the Editorial Board of the journal Youth and Policy (1982), a very influential vehicle for developing a theoretical and research-based discourse for youth work. Many Durham staff and ex-students served on the editorial collective, including Tony Jeffs, Jean Spence, Muriel Sawbridge, Sarah Banks, Umme Imam, Tracey Hodgson and Naomi Stanton. In partnership with Durham University, the Youth
and Policy collective began a series of biennial conferences on the history of community and youth work, starting in 2001 and still continuing today - resulting in a series of very influential books recording and debating the history of the profession. From 2002, a part-time professional qualifying Masters programme was established, which later became full-time as the BA degree was phased out. More PhD students began to study topics related to community and youth work, and one of these, Andrew Orton (PhD 2008), is the most recent member of academic staff, bringing expertise in faithbased and inter-cultural work.
Influence in the Field The role of fieldwork development officer was created in the late 1990s, with Melanie Eve, a Durham-based detached youth worker, as the first post-holder. Anne Marron took over this role in 2002, playing a crucial role in linking with the field and overseeing student placements. Many alumni have gone on to play major roles in developing practice and
policy in the UK and beyond. For example, Jufitri Joha (MA 2010) returned to Malaysia to develop youth work qualifications, while Leon Mexter (Cert 1993), currently Chief Executive of Youth Focus: North East, has played a leading role in youth work developments regionally and nationally in the UK. According to Leon: “Being a student on the Community and Youth Work
Certificate in the 1990s was a formative experience in my youth work career. Personal development was a very strong feature of the course, and I have carried the lessons relating to equality and diversity throughout my journey in youth work.” Tracey Hodgson (DipHE 1999, MA 2008), who works for West End Woman and Girls’ Centre in Newcastle, made these remarks about her time at Durham:
“Seated at round tables in a room full of debate, energy and conflicting views was a privilege and Socratic in nature… I know friends who studied at Durham who work in an extensive spread of fields and positions, all contributing to the search for equality and a fair society. It is a long legacy.”
“Many alumni have gone on to play major role in developing practice and policy in the UK and beyond.”
ABOVE: Students from the Community and Youth Work Course in the late 1980s.
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SOCIAL WORK AT DURHAM “It was in 1991 that Durham University started formally to teach Social Work through the launch of the Centre for Applied Social Studies.”
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Under different guises, Durham University has had a relatively long history of links with Social Work. A number of well-known graduates have gone on to make a significant contribution both within and outside the social work profession. Sir Herbert Laming, former chief inspector with the Social Services Inspectorate and past President of the Association of Directors of Social Services studied applied social studies at Durham in 1960. He was appointed as a life peer in 1998 and later was selected as the Chair of the Inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié, a landmark case in the modern history of British social work. Biddy Baxter MBE graduated with a degree in Social Studies in 1955, deciding to move away from work as a psychiatric social worker to pursue a career
in children’s television, most famously as Editor of the world’s longest running children’s TV Programme, Blue Peter. Laming was awarded an honorary degree by the University in 1999, and Baxter in 2012. It was, however, in 1991 that Durham University started formally to teach social work through the launch of the Centre for Applied Social Studies in conjunction with a group of local social services, probation and voluntary agencies. The aim was to offer postgraduate qualifying education to social workers and probation officers and to develop Social Work research in the region. The vision was also to build a national and international research profile. Professor David Chaney, then Head of the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, played a major role in supporting the development of the Centre, along with Sarah Banks, then based in the Department of Adult and Continuing Education.
The founding director of the Centre was Audrey Mullender, until recently Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford. The Centre was located within the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, but had its own base at 15 Old Elvet. The first intake of students to the new Diploma in Social Work MA in Applied Social Studies took place in Autumn 1991. Audrey Mullender was succeeded in 1997 by Professor John Carpenter, the Centre’s inaugural Chair. John’s skills in seeking external funding for research led to rapid expansion in the number of doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers in Social Work with funded research projects on themes such as mental health, family
ABOVE: Social Work staff at Durham today.
support, disability and child protection developing rapidly. Other notable colleagues at the time included Justine Schneider, now Professor of Mental Health & Social Care at the University of Nottingham and Beverley Prevatt Goldstein who was Programme Director for the DipSW. They were assisted by a group of dedicated part-time tutors and agency lecturers, including Amanda Main and Chris Blue, who for many years combined social work practice with tutoring and support of Durham Social Work students. Over the next eight years, under John Carpenter’s leadership, students in Social Work expanded in number and a broader portfolio of
programmes was developed, including a Master’s in Social Work Studies and a suite of post-qualifying programmes. In 1999, Simon Hackett joined the team, who was later promoted to Professor, and Helen Charnley, who as Programme Director led the development of the new Master of Social Work (MSW) programme in 2004. Hackett and Charnley remain at Durham as the longest serving colleagues in the Social Work team. They were later joined by Tony Clamp, Di Bailey and Gordon Jack, who in turn left to take up a post at the University of Bedfordshire and Chairs in social work at Nottingham Trent and Northumbria Universities, respectively.
ABOVE: Social Work students.
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In 2005, upon the departure of John Carpenter to the University of Bristol, Professor Lena Dominelli was appointed to the position of Chair. Lena is widely acknowledged as a leading figure in international Social Work education and co-edits the journal International Social Work, first with Hackett and currently a newer colleague to the social work team, Vasilios Ioakimidis. In 2008, Simon Hackett became the first member of the Social Work team to be appointed as the Head of the retitled and integrated School of Applied Social Sciences. Professor Roger Smith joined in 2012 from De Montfort University. The current Social Work team comprises Dominelli, Hackett, Charnley, Ioakimidis, Smith as academic staff with Beverley Blythe, Michaela Griffin, Anne-Marie Ianzito, Mary Judges, Jane Wistow and Josie Phillips as Practice Tutors and Teaching Fellows. They are supported by Joanne Hare as
Practice Learning Co-ordinator. Since the initial intake of students in 1991, the Social Work team at Durham has been privileged to work hundreds of dedicated and enthusiastic students, many of whom have gone on to make successful careers in the field and in academia, enhancing the reputation of Social Work teaching in Durham, both nationally and world-wide. For example, one of the first students to graduate through the DipSW Programme, Rachael Shimmin, is currently corporate director for children and adults services at Durham County Council and was awarded an OBE for her services to Social Work in 2014. The tradition of excellence in social work teaching continues, with the School working in partnership with local service providers, service users and carers in offering the Master of Social Work programme, which prepares graduates for professional social work practice. Successful
completion of the MSW enables students to apply to the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) for registration as social workers. The emphasis placed on research is evidenced by two additional programmes. The MA Social Research Methods (Social Work) provides an introduction to the principles and values of social work and understanding of the organisation and delivery of social welfare and related services (health education, housing etc.) in the UK. It covers a range of approaches to research - not only in terms of the techniques used in social research, but also in terms of the theoretical underpinnings of research. International links are fostered via the Masters in International Social Work and Community Development, aimed particularly at students with an interest in international social work, community development and comparative social policy.
‘My studies helped me to acknowledge my own values and ethics and enabled me to ensure that they were in keeping with my role and the task of being responsible for the care and well-being of children and young people.’ Marie-Rose Gregg (MA/DipSW, 1997)
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CENTRE FOR METHODOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES The Centre for Methodological Research in the Social Sciences was launched in December 2014 as part of the School’s programme of Anniversary celebrations.
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The mission of the Centre for Methodological Research in the Social Sciences (CMRiSS) is to conduct excellent research and scholarship on the development, implementation, and public role of social research methods. Institutionally
based at the School of Applied Social Sciences and affiliated with Josephine Butler College, the Centre is a cross-faculty initiative that builds upon Durham University’s leading reputation in research and teaching in the social sciences.
The Centre for Methodological Research has four key aims:
These aims will be implemented via an integrated focus on four mains areas of research (see figure):
1. To enhance the understanding of social science methodology through research and scholarship.
•
2. To support academic and public engagement with methodological research through conferences, seminars, summer schools, short courses and public engagement events.
Methodological innovation: Developing original methodological approaches as well as enhancing existing methodologies in the social sciences.
•
3. To act as a hub for ideas and project development for methodological research and research led teaching within SASS and the Faculty of Social Science and Health.
Methodological interfaces: Exploring the boundary relations between methodological approaches to better understand and use combined or mixed methods in substantive research.
•
Understanding method- in-action: Research which brings to the foreground how social, economic and political contexts shape - and are shaped by social research methodologies.
•
Ethics in methodological practice: Investigating the ethical questions associated with conducting research in concrete social contexts.
4. To build research capacity in methodological research by supporting PGT and PGR research on social research methods.
www.durham.ac.uk/methodsresearch
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THE CENTRE FOR SEX, GENDER AND SEXUALITIES (CSGS) The Centre for Sex, Gender and Sexualities (CSGS) is an intellectually vibrant, broadreaching home to a range of cutting edge academic and policy.
Addressing worldwide issues relating to all three themes, the Centre positions Durham as a leader in this field, with the capacity to shape future sex, gender and sexuality, equality and diversity research agendas. Supported by a multidisciplinary steering group, the Centre grew out of the successful Gender Research network led by Dr Sylvie Gambaudo and was launched in 2011 by Professor. Jo Phoenix. CSGS is currently led by two Co-Directors, Professor Maggie O’Neill and Dr Mark McCormack. Central to our mission of enhancing the research environment at Durham related to gender and sexualities, we run a range of academic and developmental activities. The CSGS annual Summer School gives space to postgraduates and early career researchers to engage with a range of methods workshops and careerrelated activity on the first
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day, and a conference on the second day with national and international speakers such as Professor Wendy Chapkis , Professor Feona Attwood, Professor Ritch Savin-Williams, Professor Steve Epstein and this 50th Anniversary year, Professor Ken Plummer, Professor Betsy. Ettore and Professor Ron Weitzer. We also host regular Afterwork events in collaboration with St Aiden’s College at Durham, offering seminars, reading group, film club and sessions to support postgraduate and early career research in the development of their work. CSGS is a member of sexgen, a collaborative interdisciplinary network bringing together gender and sexuality based research centres around the North of England and has organised a sexgen seminar for the 50th Anniversary on Sex Work in the North. This focuses on the key issues and challenges faced by sex workers, researchers, activists and support projects in the
North in times of austerity, political turbulence and neo-liberalism. The Centre also maximises the impact of its policy oriented research by acting as a bridge between researchers and other stakeholders, such as policy makers, lawyers, educationalists, social and community workers, and corporate and social enterprises, to deliver research which has tangible public benefit and impact. Central to this is the Sex Work Research Hub, to be launched in 2015, that connects regional national and international researchers and universities to collaborate, conduct research, training and knowledge exchange.
“Addressing worldwide issues relating to all three themes, the Centre positions Durham as a leader in this field, with the capacity to shape future sex, gender and sexuality, equality and diversity research agendas.�
www.durham.ac.uk/csgs
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CENTRE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND COMMUNITY ACTION The Centre for Social Justice and Community Action (CSJCA) focuses on social justiceoriented research that is co-produced by university and community partners internationally, nationally and in North East England.
The CSJCA specialises in participatory action research (PAR) and has a strong track record of catalysing community-university engagement. The Centre was launched in 2009 by Professors Sarah Banks (School of Applied Social Sciences) and Rachel Pain (Geography), with initial support from Beacon North East (the North East’s Beacon for Public Engagement). Dr Andrew Russell (Anthropology) became the third co-director in 2010. The Centre is hosted by SASS, taking direction from a steering group of academics, postgraduate researchers and community partners and an international advisory board. It builds on the long tradition of community development work at Durham, particularly linked to our Community and Youth Work teaching and research. The Centre’s membership has grown to over 450 – nearly half from outside the University. Community
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partners benefit from the association with the University, including access to specialist resources, training and opportunities, to come together with a wide range of academics, researchers, practitioners and volunteers. In turn, the University benefits from the expertise and insights of people with experience of the topics being researched and with the contacts and mandate to turn research findings into action. Recent successes include action research with Thrive Teesside on high-cost credit in low-income households; two Arts and Humanities Research Council projects on ethics in community-based participatory research; and the co-ordination of part of a large Economic and Social Research Council project, Imagine – connecting communities through research. The Imagine project includes 11 community partners on Tyneside, working with
the Centre to explore Community Development and Regeneration, starting with the historic Community Development Projects (CDPs) of the 1970s in Benwell and North Shields. These action research projects were part of the first UK anti-poverty programme. The Department of Social Theory and Institutions at Durham oversaw the research element at Benwell, whilst two current SASS staff worked for the projects in the 1970s: Professor Gary Craig as community worker in Benwell and Professor David Byrne as researcher in North Shields. Both are involved in the current Imagine research project, which is being supervised by Professor Sarah Banks. Judith Green, employed as researcher on
the Benwell project in the 1970s, is also involved in co-ordinating the community partners in the Imagine reseach project. In addition to highlycited academic articles, the Centre has produced very popular toolkits and ethical guidelines, designed to stimulate and guide participatory research partnerships. The Centre has run two major conferences, numerous seminars and workshops. It holds regular training, offering inspiring learning and networking opportunities for postgraduate and early career researchers, who find themselves sharing ideas and information and sowing the seeds for future initiatives.
“The best bit was to learn there are others who believe in using accessible language and that those in universities are not all from ‘ivory towers’”. (Voluntary sector worker)
“Training provided by the Centre has inspired researchers I work with and I regularly use and refer to resources produced such as the Ethics and Principles guide”. (University researcher)
www.durham.ac.uk/beacon/socialjustice/
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CENTRE FOR RESEARCH INTO VIOLENCE AND ABUSE (CRIVA) “CRiVA was launched by joint directors Professor Nicole Westmarland and Professor Simon Hackett in June 2013, with Professor Liz Kelly giving our inaugural lecture.�
Durham Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse (CRiVA) is dedicated to improving knowledge about interpersonal violence and abuse and to improving professional and societal responses. Particular areas of specialism include: Rape and Sexual Violence and Partner Violence, and these are researched in terms of both adults and children, and both those who use and those
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who experience violence and abuse. We are proud to have a number of survivors of violence and abuse who are active members of our centre. CRiVA was launched by joint directors Professor Nicole Westmarland and Professor Simon Hackett in June 2013, with Professor Liz Kelly giving our inaugural lecture.
The Centre currently has around 180 members consisting of 80 staff and students from within the university and 100 members from outside of the University, from local and national organisations and individuals from around the country. CRiVA has a thriving group of postgraduate researchers, who meet on a weekly basis to discuss contemporary issues relating to violence and abuse over coffee. In
addition, external speakers are invited, twice per term, to give presentations and discuss their work with CRiVA members. Recent years have seen a national surge of interest from students campaigning against violence and abuse on campus, particularly the way it links with ‘lad culture’, and CRiVA works closely with other groups at Durham that are interested in ending violence and abuse,
such as Durham Student Union Feminist Society, Durham Women Rising, the It Happens Here campaign in Durham, and Darlington and Co. Durham Rape and Sexual Abuse Counselling Centre. Every November, CRiVA runs an annual conference on sexual violence at the Wolfson Research Institute at Durham University Queen’s Campus – and the conference is now proud to be in its 9th year in 2015.
www.durham.ac.uk/criva/
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The team would like to thank those who have contributed text and images including Centre Directors and Programme Directors within the School and those beyond the University including: Jim Beckford, Huw Beynon, Lucy Cordell, Judith Green, Roger Hood, Robert Moore, Mary Rex, Laurie Taylor and Margareta Kern. We are grateful for the many responses to our calls for information from Alumni and hope to hear more over the years. This document has been drawn together by the 50th Anniversary Working Group, Maria Aznarez, Richard Bruce, Nicole Westmarland and Georgina Wilczek. We have made every effort to produce an account of the School which is factually correct and captures something of the breadth of work which the School has undertaken in its 50 years. We are grateful to all those who have contributed and apologise for any unintentional errors, inadequacies or omissions.
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CopyrightŠ Durham University 2015. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the permission of the University. For further information:
www.durham.ac.uk/sass Twitter: @DurhamSASS
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