Author: Robert Dingwall

Robert Dingwall is an emeritus professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University. He also serves as a consulting sociologist, providing research and advisory services particularly in relation to organizational strategy, public engagement and knowledge transfer. He is co-editor of the SAGE Handbook of Research Management.

Should Universities Be Parents?
Higher Education Reform
April 17, 2018

Should Universities Be Parents?

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Interrogating Ethnography – and Coming Up with the Wrong Answers?
News
February 8, 2018

Interrogating Ethnography – and Coming Up with the Wrong Answers?

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Sexual Harassment and Universities
News
December 22, 2017

Sexual Harassment and Universities

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Open Access and Learned Societies: An Update
News
October 24, 2017

Open Access and Learned Societies: An Update

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Presumed Consent to Organ Donation – Gesture Politics?

Presumed Consent to Organ Donation – Gesture Politics?

England is looking at changing its organ transplant permission process from on opt-in to an opt out model. While this looks like an easy answer, says our Robert Dingwall, who part of a working group on the issue in the 90s, he doubts such a change will make any significant difference and may actually be counter-productive in terms of public confidence in the system.

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Managing Universities: Dodging the Dead Cat

Managing Universities: Dodging the Dead Cat

Academics have been disengaged, disengaged themselves, or never been engaged with the challenges of working in, and for, very complex organizations, says our Robert Dingwall. Their distaste for administration in its various forms is a liability.

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UK HE: Markets Are Good for Everyone – Except Academics….

UK HE: Markets Are Good for Everyone – Except Academics….

So if markets are truly good for English higher education, as many seem to think, should we follow that train of thought to its logical conclusions?

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Reimagining the UK Sociology Curriculum: Internationalization, Decolonialization and Employability

Reimagining the UK Sociology Curriculum: Internationalization, Decolonialization and Employability

How well do sociology departments in the UK teach sociology that originated in the UK? Asking that surprisingly hard question may produce usable insights for academic Britain, argues our Robert Dingwall.

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Grenfell Tower: The Missing Social Dimension of Fire Regulations

Grenfell Tower: The Missing Social Dimension of Fire Regulations

Fire safety is not just an issue for engineers. People build buildings, people live in buildings, and people use (and abuse) buildings. That creates a need for social and behavioral work to accompany every nail driven.

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Leadership and the UK General Election 2017

Leadership and the UK General Election 2017

For social scientists, there must be a concern that a generation’s worth of accumulated empirical evidence on effective leadership has made so little impact on the candidates in the upcoming General Election in the United Kingdom.

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Negotiating Brexit – A Clash of Legal Cultures?

Negotiating Brexit – A Clash of Legal Cultures?

Membership in the European Union was a contract, and the differing legal approaches between situational British common law and the more codified French approach helps explain some of the rancor as Brexit comes to be applied.

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In Search of Conservative Sociology

In Search of Conservative Sociology

As sociology has drifted further and further from any conservative touchstones, argues Robert Dingwall, it has become less and less able to understand the society that provides its subsistence.

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