Research students

Alistair Bernal Holmes is a PhD candidate in the department of Sociology at Goldsmiths. His research focuses on the politics of futurity in the contemporary era, with a particular interest in potential and emergent ‘exits’ from a crisis-stricken capitalist present.

Before joining Goldsmiths, he completed a BA in International Relations and Politics from the University of Sheffield and an MA in European Culture & Thought from UCL, as well as worked as an educator in France, Spain and China for over eight years. 

Supervisors

• Svenja Bromberg
• Alberto Toscano 

Brenda is a part-time PhD Sociology student and a counsellor working with children who have experienced domestic abuse. She has a special interest in researching with children using multimodal ethnography. 

Her research project is a multimodal ethnographic study with children who have experienced domestic abuse and social care interventions. This thesis explores the everyday lives of children. There is significant literature about domestic abuse and children, but very few have been done with children themselves (Callaghan, Fellin and Alexander, 2017). Even when research has been done with children there is little exploration of their lives beyond the remit of domestic abuse.

Using multimodal ethnography, the thesis attends to the everyday lives of children who have experienced domestic abuse and social care interventions. The research foregrounds children’s knowledge and experience of their lives, and it uses a multimodal method to enable children to express themselves. The research shows how, in paying close attention to the mundane practice and materiality of everyday life, we can experience how children make sense of their lives and experiences, resulting in children creating knowledge about themselves that is beyond the constraints of domestic abuse and adversity. 

Supervisor

• Sevasti-Melissa Nolas

Dinesh Poudyal is a current PhD researcher in Sociology. Mr. Poudyal is a Gold Medalist, being awarded the Gold Medal by the then king of Nepal for acquiring the first position in his MA in Sociology from Tribhuvan University, Nepal.

Along with his good experiences in teaching Sociology at a higher level, he also has experience in social research. As an author, Mr Poudyal has published a book called: Sociology of Economic Development. His active involvement in Nepalese diasporic organisations in the UK has helped him to widen his opportunity to work as a student representative of PhD Sociology, and a student community leader in this university.

Following the global trends of recent migration, immigrants’ integration has been considered a major challenge for European nations. In light of its colonial past, the United Kingdom has practised different integration strategies to accommodate its diversified immigrants, especially its commonwealth dominions.

In the context of Nepal, due to the Nepalese soldiers’ (known as Gurkhas) distinct and diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, the subject of Nepalese migration and integration has been considered a significant area of study. Therefore, Mr. Dinesh Poudyal’s research aims to explore Nepalese migrants’ immigration and integration status in relation to the immigration and integration policies adopted by the UK. 

Supervisors

• Sara Farris
• Les Back 

George Kalivis (he/they) is a PhD candidate in Visual Sociology and Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, with a background in Gender Studies (Goldsmiths) and Architecture (University of Thessaly). Their doctoral research looks at the homemaking tactics of the Greek queer diaspora in London, with a focus on how alternative modes of pedagogy, care, and kinship are being shared inventively among its members.

The project elaborates conceptually and methodologically on a practice-based ethnographic exploration of “how-to” guidance manuals as performative devices for doing the self and its affinities, arguing for the bodily counter-normative potentials that such devices may take within the queer-diasporic community. 

 
George has collaborated with scholars, artists, institutions and collectives on cultural and academic projects in Greece and the UK as a researcher, designer, director, curator, artist, educator, author and editor. Among further projects, he is Podcast and Visual Coordinator at The Sociological Review, Research Assistant at Politics of Patents, and Podcast Researcher, Artist and Presenter for Who Do We Think We Are? 

Supervisors

• Kat Jungnickel
• Nirmal Puwar 
• Nina Wakeford (former)

Links

• Instagram: @geo_kalivis 
• ORCID ID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8048-8437 
• Further channel: goldsmiths.academia.edu/GeorgeKalivis 

Jordan is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. She obtained her MA in Human Rights, Culture, and Social Justice from Goldsmiths, University of London. She founded Souljourn Yoga Foundation, a US 501(c)3 non-profit that raises awareness and funds for young women’s education and empowerment by using yoga as a platform for social activism. Jordan has been featured in Forbes, Yoga Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Evening Standard, and Marie Claire UK. Jordan is an activist, writer, yoga teacher, and TEDx speaker. 

Originating from India, yoga is a 4,000-year-old practice, which has become a global phenomenon. Even the United Nations chose to deem June 21st as International Yoga Day thus “recognizing that yoga provides a holistic approach to health and well-being” (UN, 2014). But can the benefits of yoga be accessible and adaptable for populations who have never been exposed to a ‘downward facing dog’?

This project explores how learning yoga and other holistic practices, including elements of self-care, such as meditation and creative expression through movement, can positively impact female, and adolescent Berber students in the High Atlas Mountains of rural Morocco. The study looks at how yoga can be a bridge between the internal and external world by offering a variety of practices and tools that help to bridge the two worlds together through embodiment.  

Jordan’s project explores what it means to think with, and through, the body as the vehicle for all other forms of empowerment. How to understand the term ‘embodiment’ is central, and the women in the program guide the project here. Trainees will learn about physical yoga practices and how those can be used, be it for self-practice or teaching a group. Jordan is leading yoga classes virtually through Zoom so that the students become familiar with the yoga practice before the intensive training sessions that she will teach in person in Morocco.

The project’s methodology employs qualitative research methods to assess the journey of each young woman involved in the On the Ground Training. Jordan will follow the same group of baccalaureate students for two years as they study yoga, prior to their graduation from EFA. Interviews are the main method for collecting research data, but the project also uses observation, and written reflections – Jordan’s own, the students’ and the housemothers.

Supervisor

• Vikki Bell

Links

• Instagram: @jforjordanashley
• Instagram: @souljournyoga 

Oliver is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology of Goldsmiths College, studying transitions to community ownership. He helped to take Bath City FC into community ownership and previously served on the board of Supporters Direct (now part of the Football Supporters Association). He also works as Research Director of New Citizenship Project, a consultancy and think tank specialising in participatory culture and strategy.

Oliver has an MA in Critical and Creative Analysis from Goldsmiths College and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.   

Using an ANT-inspired ethnographic approach, Oliver’s research takes a closer look at the nuts and bolts of how groups come together and take the things that matter to them into community ownership. He explores such transitional processes as sites of contest and negotiation in which old assumptions are rendered mutable and new possibilities arise; different conceptions of the asset and its communities are mobilised, and various power asymmetries are reshuffled. 

Supervisors

• Michael Guggenheim
• Katherine Robinson 

Links

• Further channel: holtaway.wixsite.com/research 

Silvia has a BA in Filmmaking and Creative Media from the University of the West of England, and a MRes in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths. Between the two, she worked as a film curator for MUBI and as a freelance journalist for various international publications and websites – most regularly, she run a ‘Coming of Age’ column for Shanghai-based magazine Modern Weekly China, on how the trends followed by young people around the world come to reflect broader cultural and political shifts.

As a film curator, Silvia still organises occasional screenings in London’s theatres and galleries.As well as a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, she is now an Associate Lecturer, Silvia teaches or has taught in the Fashion and Design Product departments at the RCA, Contextual and Theoretical Studies at LCC, and Fashion Journalism at LCF.

Silvia’s PhD focuses on shoplifting as a feminist practice, and is part of the ERC-funded ‘Politics of Patents (POP): Re-imagining citizenship via clothing inventions 1820-2020’ research project. It examines the clothes that female shoplifters wore or might have worn at the turn of the 20th century, as sartorial technologies that enabled, facilitated, or encouraged theft as an act of resistance.

Silvia’s research is conducted across archives, by drawing textual and visual connections between selected inventions from the POP database, patented in the late 19th and early 20th century, and contemporary newspapers’ description of shoplifters’ clothes. Because history forgets women’s shoplifting when it’s successful, her research is also necessarily speculative: drawing from the transcripts of those that failed, she seeks to reimagine successful thefts. 

Supervisors

• Kat Jungnickel
• Nirmal Puwar 
• Rebecca Coleman (former)

Links

• Instagram: @silviabombardini

Stephanie Guirand (She, her, hers) is a Haiti-born member of the Haitian-American cis-woman. Stephanie holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Connecticut, a master's degree from the University of London, SOAS, and is currently a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the Sociology Department. Stephanie Guirand is a gender specialist who identifies as a Black feminist.

Her thesis focuses on housing policy and housing transience among African-descended men who ‘live’ between multiple households. Stephanie is the treasurer of Goldsmiths Racialised Postgraduate Network (GRPN), the secretary of the Board of Directors at AMINGA: Youth Sports Development Program, and is a senior researcher for The Black Response Cambridge and the current Board President of Cambridge Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team (HEART).  

Absent effective policies and programs, where do Black men live? This case study examines formal (public housing, section 8 vouchers, inclusionary housing) and informal ways (social networks) that low-income African-descended men meet their housing needs in Cambridge, MA, USA.  The data collection methods are service-based episodic ethnography with participant observation and participatory action research (PAR).

The overarching argument is that housing insecurity and transience are politically protracted phenomena. Stephanie's project makes three claims: 1) The housing insecurity experienced by low-income African-descended men needs to be empirically examined. Collapsing them with others ignores the specific experiences at their intersection (i.e. gender, race, and class). 2) A complex web of policies, programs, and eligibility criteria result in de facto exclusion of African-descended men. And 3) to address their basic housing needs, these men rely on their social networks, predominantly composed of women, who bear an inordinate burden as a result. 

Supervisor

• Brian Alleyne 

Sunwoo Kim is a PhD student in the Sociology department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Prior to joining the PhD programme, he studied BA in Cultural Contents at Inha University in South Korea and the first MA in Aesthetics & Art Theory at CRMEP (The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy) and the second MA in Sociology at Goldsmiths university. He is currently studying STS theories and sensory ethnography under the guidance of Alex and Michael. 

His current research interests are the interrelationship between physical and digital space, and its implications on residents’ sociality in everyday life. It scrutinises the various interactions between human and non-human agencies in the two cities, London and Seoul.

The research investigates the organisation of space, the constitution of neighbourhoods, the use of digital technology, the balance of human life with nature and encounters, and forces like interests, preferences, or institutions that propel essences into action, in the cities. It is expected to shed light on not only the problem of housing insecurity, scarcity and solitude for the young and aged generation but also critically question the current re-urbanisation and the regeneration of the cities in the neo-liberalised world. 

Supervisors

• Alex Rhys-Taylor
• Michael Guggenheim 
• Brian Alleyne (former)

Links

• Instagram: @moonandlight21

Thomas Wadsworth is a PhD student in Visual Sociology and Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Their research focuses on self-harm and online spaces, with particular attention to the circulation of imageries, and different ways mental healthcare is co-constituted within affected communities beyond medical and clinical settings. They are also interested in the topics of participatory methods and what to do when they fail, and social and aesthetic ‘deviance’. 

Supervisors

• Sevasti-Melissa Nolas
• Rebecca Coleman
• Yasmin Gunaratnam (former)

Links

• Twitter: @TomWadsworth_ 

Zoe Walshe is a PhD candidate and Associate Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Zoe’s doctoral research explores children's and families’ accounts of housing precarity in austerity Britain. The thesis traces the figure of the child through a series of case studies, developing a qualitative data patchwork from crowdsourced archives, local housing activism and participatory arts projects, alongside policy and legal texts. 

Zoe is co-convenor of the Childhood Publics Reading Group (2019-present), steering committee member of the Centre for Urban and Community Research and member of the research network, NYLON. She has previously worked as a research assistant for the Centre for Urban and Community Research (Goldsmiths) on the Fellowship Inn Evaluation Project and Interfaith Childhoods. 

Supervisors

• Emma Jackson

• Sevasti-Melissa Nolas 

• Michaela Benson (former)