School of Sociology and Social Policy
 

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Will Paterson

Assistant Professor in Sociology and Criminology, Faculty of Social Sciences

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Biography

I joined the School as a Teaching Associate in 2018 from the the University of York, where I worked as an Associate Lecturer (2016-2018) and completed my PhD (2019) 'Belonging in a Peri-urban Village: contesting social, spatial and symbolic boundaries'.

My research interests are in discourses of place, community and belonging - especially where such claims are made and contested through planning and development processes in the rural-urban fringe. I am currently attempting to write about the rural imaginaries present in popular non-fiction, and separately contributing to an research project that examines community networks and social infrastructure in the context of post-COVID urban regeneration schemes. Much of my teaching is focused on the ways in which we talk about people and places.

From February 2023, I am a Digital Learning Director for the Faculty of Social Sciences and was the Digital Teaching and Learning Lead for the School of Sociology & Social Policy between 2020 and 2023.

Expertise Summary

Policy and media discourses of place, and spatial planning processes, notions of community and belonging.

Teaching Summary

I teach primarily across undergraduate modules, as well as supervising BA and MA dissertation projects. I currently convenes two modules in the second year:

- Crime Stories: Crime, Justice and the Media (an elective)

- Research Design and Practice: Quantitative Methods (a core module).

Since 2019 I have taught across the following modules:

- Understanding Contemporary Society

- Identity in Popular Culture

- Contemporary Theories of Crime, Justice and Society

- Crimes and Harms of the Powerful

- Research Design and Practice (Qualitative)

- Research Methods and Research Management

- Researching Media, Culture and Society

School of Sociology and Social Policy

Law and Social Sciences building
University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

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