Projects

Insecurity and Community Violence: Since my PhD research 15 years ago, I have always been focused on understanding everyday life under the experiences of community violence. As you will see on my CV, the majority of my publications fall into this area of research. Recently I was Co-PI on an 18-month ERSC/AHRC funded research project titled, ‘Breaking Bad: Understanding violence at the intersection between transnational organised crime, community, and masculinities in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad’. ‘Breaking Bad’ was a multi-level interdisciplinary research project, combining researchers in peace and conflict studies (Dr Adam Baird, Coventry University), cultural anthropology (Dr Dylan Kerrigan, University of the West Indies), and international relations (IR) (Dr Matthew Bishop, University of Sheffield). On the macro level the project used an IR lens to investigate the scope and reach of TOC in Trinidad in recent history, this included qualitative and quantitative indicators building on the datasets of World, Bank, UNDP and UNODC, and involved interviews with key experts across civil society, government, the security services, and state institutions and international development community. On the meso level qualitative interviews and ethnographic research were conducted in two communities of Port of Spain, Beetham Gardens and Sea Lots, to ask middle aged to older members of the community including police officers who have worked their over time, what they think has contributed to the dramatic upturn in violence since the late 1990s. And on the micro level, which is the data I collected and worked with, we collected qualitative data on language-in-use and worldviews amongst young people who live in communities of violence, while also sharing with them academic explanations for why violence in their communities might be so high. For the data collection part of the project I devised a creative, decolonial and indigenous methodology through which to collect the experiences of community violence of 16-20 year olds from areas the police label “Hot Spots”. We did this by running 15 weeks of two-hour spoken word workshops with 30 participants. Each week a different topic was raised for group discussion and an expert on the subject matter invited to address the group. Both before and after the contribution of the subject-expert the rest of the allotted time each week was spent on developing spoken word pieces connected to the week’s topic. Subject areas included weaponisation, gender based violence, transnational drugs, social history, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and more. We included day trips as well. The relationships developed with the young people over the 15 weeks allowed us to collect data on issues that are usually very difficult to probe or understand on the emic level. We also sought to build capacity for when we left to help the participants continue to work with spoken word groups. 4 publication outputs are currently in production from this project. The research team has also recently put in a large research grant to the ESRC to extend this research project to Guyana, Belize and London for a period of 3 years.

 

2) Sociology in Crisis and Making the Case for Sociology in the 21st Century: Another research strand of mine looks at the neoliberalisation of the university and the financialisation of academic knowledge production more generally. In this area of research I ask the question what happens to sociology as academic labour, the sociologist them self and the sociological imagination when the institution within which sociology is produced is remade as a place of profit and audit culture instead of the more traditionally conceived value free knowledge production? I have a book contract from Policy Press/Bristol University Press for this project and am due to submit a final manuscript in Feb 2019. The book project is titled, ‘Imagining Society: Making the Case for Sociology in the 21st Century.’ This book will be an introduction to sociology paperback expected to be sold widely with a low cover price .

 

3) The Judiciary – Justice out of Injustice: Between 2015 and 2017 working with the Judicial Education Institute of Trinidad and Tobago (JEITT) I was the research coordinator for a large research project into two central areas, 1) Procedural Fairness in local Magistrate Courts, and 2) the Implicit Biases of Judges, Magistrates and Judicial Officers. In order to do this work I trained and led 3 teams of Judicial Educators in Rapid Assessment Ethnography who then spent 3 months collecting data from the courts across the country. So far we have turned this data into 3 main outputs: 1) A book of ethnographic vignettes; 2) A technical project report shared with the Government of Trinidad and Tobago; and 3) workshops with Magistrates to discuss and educate on the findings of the research. Further outputs are forthcoming as there is lots more data to work through.

4) Political Culture and Governance: I also conduct research investigations via Rapid Ethnographic Assessment into local political culture. In a recent project done with the IADB the research question investigated was, ‘why local Government Ministers in the current administration and previous administrations are not more enthusiastic and effusive about evidence based solutions to the problems of crime and violence in the country?’ The outputs from this work continue and I have published/presented so far on the complex of Post-Colonial Governmentality in the Caribbean context, everyday cultures of corruption (including white collar crime), Transnational Organised Crime and Corruption, the militarisation of everyday life, and the obstacles around political culture locally to sustainable development in a high crime and violence context.

5) Transnational Popular Psychology and the Sociology of Knowledge: I am founding member of a multidisciplinary international research network in critical psychology that studies the self-help/wellness/happiness industries from a critical sociological vista. In this field I am also a series co-editor for the Routledge Series in Therapeutic Cultures. I have a co-authored book that was published in 2016, titled ‘Transnational Popular Psychology and the Global Self-Help Industry: The Politics of Contemporary Social Change.’ A second book titled, ‘Therapeutic Worlds: Popular Psychology and the Socio-Cultural Organisation of Intimate Life,’ is in production and due to be published by Routledge in Nov, 2018. I am also an editor for a Global Handbook of Therapeutic due to be published in November 2019. I also have further journal publications in this field that are in preparation. And you can see a TedX talk of me from 2015 on some of the ideas from the first book here https://youtu.be/ZAOUEyBnGE8?t=13s