Dr Alex Cockain

My PhD is in Social Anthropology. Before coming to CCCU, I taught for 9 years in Hong Kong where I was an instructor (2012-13), teaching fellow (2013-16), and Assistant Professor (2016-21). I am Module Lead for Sociology, Society and Social Work, Social Work Research, Social Work Dissertation and Dissertation module. Since my first book entitled Young Chinese in Urban China (2012), much of my work has focused upon issues of social inclusion and social exclusion and especially how ability and disability are made through social encounters, discourse, media representations, and everyday practices. My recent work has also explored the tactics disabled people and their families deploy to cope, and make do, with exclusionary places and practices and the ways they attempt to manage disabling social encounters. My research has been published in many peer-reviewed journals. These include Disability and Society, The British Journal of Social Work, Cultural Geographies, The China Journal, Time and Society, and Social Semiotics.In 2024, my book entitled Learning Disability and Everyday Life was published by Routledge. This is part of the Routledge Advances in Disability Studies series.

I joined the Social Work team in 2021. I teach Sociology, Society and Social Work to postgraduate students. I also teach research modules to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. I lead sessions on ethnographic observation and visual ‘data’ for The Graduate College while supervising not only PhD researchers, but also BA and MA students’ research projects. My teaching and research take inspiration from ideas from anthropology, sociology, social theory and, increasingly, disability studies and social work. I am especially excited about how these perspectives can become entangled in conversations and dialogue and especially the ways these may enable opportunities to think between the limits of singular disciplinary perspectives. My research may be regarded as qualitative (if only in the sense that I tend to investigate a small number of instances) and often ethnographic (i.e., in that it is immersive, to the extent that the taken-for-granted boundaries between research and life sometimes blur).

Since my first book entitled Young Chinese in Urban China (2012), much of my work has focused upon issues of social inclusion and social exclusion, and especially how ability and disability are made through social encounters, discourse, media representations, and everyday practices. My recent work has also explored the tactics disabled people and their families deploy to cope and make do, with exclusionary places and practices and the ways they attempt to manage disabling encounters, My forthcoming book is entitled Learning Disability and Everyday Life (2024, March). This will form part of the Routledge Advances in Disability Studies series.

British Sociological Association (member)

Royal Anthropological Institute (member)