Research Themes
Research in the lab examines the relationship between individuals and society through three interconnected themes. We examine how social structures create and perpetuate inequalities, how cultural meanings shape human experience, and how methodological innovation can enhance our understanding of complex social phenomena. Our interdisciplinary approach draws upon psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and media studies to illuminate the lived experiences of diverse communities. We are particularly interested in amplifying marginalised voices and challenging dominant narratives through rigorous empirical research.
The research themes outlined below represent our core intellectual commitments and guide our work:
Social Inequalities and Marginality
Our research focuses on examining the experiences and negotiations of pervasive inequalities that are woven into the fabric of everyday life along with the subtle ways language and communication shape our perceptions of inequalities. We do not regard social marginalities as random occurrences but created and sustained by entrenched cultural and political structures that allocate resources and recognition to certain groups while excluding others.
We aim to reveal the human cost of these disparities, evident in both statistical measures like income differentials and healthcare outcomes, and in the personal narratives of worth and belonging.
Our research explores issues such as representations of poverty in the media, the seasonal media focus on homelessness, healthcare decisions amongst extreme poor in the Global South.
What if inequalities and marginalities reflect our collective negligence?
Culture, Meaning, and Social Construction
Human beings create and disseminate meanings that both unite and divide. All meanings and knowledge are cultural artefacts and shape how societies name, classify, and respond to the challenges they face.
Our work examines meanings people develop around objects, concepts, social phenomena and indeed, their own lives too with an interest in how they scaffold their choices.
We are interested in stories people and societies tell because they become repositories of cultural meanings that communities rely on. Here our research explores how people in the Global South make healthcare choices in resource constrained settings and respond to social welfare policies.
What if the stories we tell could change the world?
Methodological Pluralism
Our research group is passionate about innovative research methods to investigate the complexities of the bidirectional relationship between people and their world. Traditional ethnographic work and interviews are complemented by micro-texts from platforms like Twitter, 4chan, and Reddit. Experimental research sits alongside computational and big-data studies. Our commitment is to the problems, not the methods.
These naturalistic, publicly available data sources offer unprecedented opportunities to understand our world. For instance, our Twitter study reveals how collective sentiment in rapid-fire tweets can highlight globally significant events.
We are committed to challenging and dismantling ethnocentric biases inherent in conventional research methods, and driven to make our approach as dynamic and multifaceted as the social phenomena we investigate.
What could we discover if we let our methods evolve along with the social world?