Tim Strangleman is Professor of Sociology, in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, SSPSSR, University of Kent, Canterbury. Having worked for five years on the London Underground as a signal worker Tim left the railways in 1988 undertaking a diploma in Social Science at Ruskin College Oxford, and then his degree and PhD at the University of Durham. He has researched and written widely on work identity, culture and meaning; traditional industries in decline and especially deindustrialisation. These include railway, coal, ship building, engineering, construction, papermaking and brewing. Tim is an historical sociologist who uses oral history and visual methods and approaches in his research, publishing articles in a range of journals. He has written three books: (2008) Work and Society: Sociological Approaches, Themes and Methods, with Tracey Warren, Routledge; (2004) Work Identity at the End of the Line? Privatisation and Culture Change in the UK Rail Industry, Palgrave. His new book, Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery, Oxford University Press, (2019). He is currently co-editing The Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies with Christie Launius and Michele Fazio (forthcoming 2020). Tim has collaborated with artists, photographers and filmmakers over his career.
Email: t.strangleman@kent.ac.uk
Websites:
http://www.kent.ac.uk/sspssr/staff/academic/strangleman.html
http://www.kent.academia.edu/TimStrangleman
Tim is a regular contributor to Working Class Perspectives blog:
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/
Current Project
Tim is currently involved in a number of projects related to his work on DePOT. He is beginning to work on a study of the historiography of deindustrialisation. This takes a historical and comparative look at how deindustrialisation emerges as a concept and idea in popular and political discourse and how that is understood in academic accounts over a number of decades. This is part of a wider and longer project examining the notion of the half-life of deindustrialisation conceptually and empirically. This raises a number of vital historical, sociological issues about the meaning of work and industry, loss, decline, nostalgia and attachment for individuals, communities and societies.
