News

Patients Not Passports: Challenging border controls in healthcare
19th June 2020
Dr Kathryn Medièn, OU Lecturer in Sociology, shares an interview she conducted with the authors of a recent report published by Patients Not Passports, a campaign which seeks to challenge the imposition of border controls within UK healthcare institutions
'COVID-19 Chronicles from the Margins'
18th June 2020
A project led by Marie Gillespie, Professor of Sociology, is exploring what it is like to be an asylum seeker, a refugee or an undocumented person under lockdown. Find out about the COVID-19 Chronicles from the Margins project
Understanding Refugee Experiences Refugee Week 15-21 June 2020
16th June 2020
Professor Marie Gillespie has worked alongside colleagues to launch on OpenLearn a collection of the Open University’s research and teaching since the beginning of the refugee policy crisis in 2015.
The impact of COVID-19 on public marketplaces in Europe
12th June 2020
The team behind the HERA-funded European project, Moving Market Places, has produced a film exploring the impacts of COVID-19 on public marketplaces in a range of European countries and reflect on what these spaces may look like after the pandemic
COVID-19 and its impact on access to justice
2nd June 2020
In this video, Professor Sophie Watson, Head of Sociology at The Open University, speaks to Roger Smith, an expert in legal aid, human rights and access to justice, about the various impacts COVID-19 is having on the law
The psychological impact of lockdown
25th May 2020
Professor Sophie Watson, Head of Sociology at The Open University, interviews Andy Metcalf, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and author of 'Slump City: The Politics of Mass Unemployment', about the social and psychological impact of lockdown
A Digital Native in the COVID-19 Lockdown
3rd May 2020
'Right now, I feel that I am a re-jigged digital hybrid'. In this personal account, Xenia Rochelle Jones, a Doctoral Research Student at The Open University, shares the impact COVID-19 has had on her as a 'digital native'
COVID-19: A sociological critique
2nd May 2020
Dr Simon Carter, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at The Open University, writes for the Cost of Living website, about how the current unfolding of medical, economic and social consequences of COVID-19 offer a unique insight into ‘sociology in action’
Professor Jacqui Gabb contributes to BBC news
1st May 2020
Jacqui Gabb, Professor of Sociology and Intimacy at The Open University, contributes to a BBC news item relating to COVID-19 and the pressures it is putting on families in lockdown together
New OU/BBC Series: Thinking Allowed
3rd March 2020
On Wednesday 4 March The Open University once again teams up with BBC Radio 4’s long-running social science programme, Thinking Allowed, for ten weeks.