Profile summary
Before starting my career in sociology and cultural studies I worked in the music industry as a manager of an Our Price Records store in Oxford Street, London. I was an ESRC scholarship student at the Institute of Education, University of London and awarded my Ph.D in Sociology in 1990. I was supervised by Professor Basil Bernstein, my second supervisor was Professor Phil Cohen, my Examiners were: Professor Laurie Taylor and Professor David Downes.
My first academic appointment was at the Institute of Education, on a feminist action-based research project: Girls and Occupational Choice ESRC funded directed by Dr. Lynne Chisholm and Dr Janet Holland. I have previously held posts at the University of Surrey and University of Greenwich.
I have conducted research projects into sociological and ethnographic aspects of young people's culture, undertaking funded research for the Home Office, London Health Authorities, the Kent Constabulary and local authorities in Kent. a consultant for the British Board of Film Classification (London) and I am also a Research Associate at Goldsmiths, Sociology Department, University of London.
CURRENT Ph.D Research Students
I am currently supervising Ph.D research students on the following topics:ethnography and schooling, health and ethnography, youth work, youth culture alcohol and drugs, cultural shopping, popular music production & consumption, computer games, piracy and youth and young Asians and sexuality. I have supervised 8 PhD students to successful completion; I have been an external examiner of PhDs at Brunel, Kent, Reading and Teesside, and internally examined 10 PhDs at Surrey University and Canterbury Christ Church University, including 2 Practice Based PhDs.
Anyone interested in undertaking MPhil/PhD studies in these areas should contact Shane: shane.blackman@canterbury.ac.uk
Research interests include ethnography, social and cultural theory, youth cultures and subcultures, popular music, drug war politics, drug education and prevention, schooling, feminist theory, homeless young people and social exclusion.
Research and knowledge exchange
Journal/Editorial Experience
ESRC Peer Review College 2010 -
Associate Editor: Journal of Youth Studies, 2011 -
Associate Editor: YOUNG: Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 2012
Editorial Board: Journal of Youth Studies, 1988 - 2011.
Editorial Board: YOUNG: Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 2012
Editorial Board: Sociology, 2010 -
Editorial Board Associate: Sociology, 2006 - 2008.
Editorial Board: Images, YMCA Journal of Reflective Practice, 1995-2004.
Editorial Board: Journal of Youth and Policy, 1993-1998.
Editorial Board: Journal of Comprehensive Education, 1985-1991.
Also referee papers for the following journals:
The Sociological Quarterly (USA)
Qualitative Sociology (USA)
American Journal of Law and Social Inquiry (University of Chicago)
Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture (USA)
International Journal of Drug Policy
Journal of Addiction Research and Theory
Journal of Social Policy
Emotion, Space and Society
International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology
Crime, Media, Culture: an International Journal
International Journal of Social Research Methodology
Gender and Education
Criminology & Criminal Justice
Drugs and Alcohol Today
SAGE Open
Sociology
Journal of Youth Studies
Sociological Research Online
Sociology Compass
YOUNG: Nordic Journal of Youth Research
Publications and research outputs
Blackman, S. (1995) Youth: positions and oppositions - style, sexuality and schooling, Aldershot: Avebury Press. (269).
Blackman, S. (1996) Drugs Education and the National Curriculum, Home Office, Drugs Prevention Paper 11, Central Drugs Prevention Unit: Home Office London. (1996: 74).
Blackman, S. (1997) "Destructing a Giro": a critical and ethnographic study of the youth ‘underclass’, Youth, the 'Underclass' and Social Exclusion (ed.) MacDonald, R. London: Routledge. (113-129).
Blackman, S. (1998) "Poxy Cupid" : an ethnographic and feminist account of a resistant female youth culture - the New Wave Girls, in Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures, (eds.) Skelton, T. and Valentine, G. London: Routledge. (207-228).
Blackman, S. (2004) "Chilling Out": the cultural politics of substance consumption, youth and drug policy. Maidenhead: McGrawHill-Open University Press, (230).
Blackman, S. (2005) Youth Subcultural Theory: a critical engagement with the concept, its origins and politics, from the Chicago School to post modernism, Journal of Youth Studies, 8, 1, (1-20).
Blackman, S. (2007) 'Hidden Ethnography': crossing emotional borders in qualitative accounts of young people's lives, Sociology, Vol.41, No. 4: (699-716).
Shildrick, T. MacDonald, R. and Blackman, S. (2010) (eds.) Young People, Class and Place. London: Routledge. (140).
Blackman, S. (2010) ‘Drug War Politics: governing culture through prohibition, intoxicants as customary practice and the challenge of drug normalisation,’ SociologyCompass, Vol. 4, Issue 10: 841–855, October, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Blackman, S. (2010) ‘The Ethnographic Mosaic’ of the Chicago School: critically locating Vivien Palmer, Clifford Shaw and Frederic Thrasher’s research methods in contemporary reflexive sociological interpretation, in Hart, C. (ed) The Legacy of the Chicago School of Sociology. Kingswinsford: Midrash Publishing, (195-215).
Blackman, S. and Commane, G. (2012) Double reflexivity: the politics of fieldwork and representation within ethnographic studies of young people, in Heath, S. and Walker, C. (eds.) Innovations in Researching Youth, London: Palgrave, (229-247).