Mapping Social Theory and Sociology

Academic

Dr Liz Dean 
School of Social and Political Sciences

Intern

Lei Hou (PhD Candidate)  
Asia Institute

Project description

This internship helped to build up a digital exhibition of social theories and sociology at Omeka, through which a lot of data wrangling regarding social thinkers/sociologists’ background and their works or bibliography has been done. How does e-teaching and/or e-learning account for supporting today’s teaching of social sciences at the university level? The project serves the goal of enrichment of pedagogical resources that are published in the e-library of University of Melbourne and included in the LMS system with open access links. The site is made of eight clusters of thinkers: 1) Classical Social Theorists and Early Sociology, 2) Structuralism, Poststructuralism and Postmodernism, 3) Symbolic Interactionists, 4) Critical Theory & the Frankfurt School, 5) Psychoanalysis, 6) Feminist, Gender & Queer Theory, 7) Globalisation, Cities and People Movements, and 8) Decoloniality, Southern Theory & Postcolonial Thought. This is not an exhaustive list, these loose clusters will be added or omitted as part of an iterative project. The process of transforming and mapping the data and dealing with attributions of images has helped foster deep engagement with social theories and sociology, as the social and cultural context is inevitably embedded in someone’s thoughts.