Thinking Allowed

What does it really mean to give something away - or to buy something second-hand? And what, in the process, are we choosing not to see? Laurie Taylor talks to Gaby Harris, Sociologist and Lecturer in Fashion Cultures at Manchester Metropolitan University, about her research on teenage girls and pocket money. Drawing on interviews with 15–17-year-olds, she shows that “pocket money” is far from simple. From parent...

How have South Asian communities in Britain fought for rights, dignity and belonging - and what can that history teach us today?

Laurie Taylor explores the overlooked histories of labour struggle, resistance and political activism among South Asian communities in Britain. From early anti-colonial networks to the strikes and campaigns of the 1970s and 80s, the programme traces how successive generations confronted discrimination whil...

What happens when we tell the story of modern Britain as part of a much bigger, global history? Professor Kate Pickett OBE has recently been appointed as the UK's first-ever Professor for the Public Understanding of Social Science at the University of York. She tells Laurie about the importance of her new role at a time when social inequalities are starker than ever. Les Back (Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow...

As a new World Cup approaches, what does it mean that gambling now sits so close to the heart of football - and how far has the game travelled from its local roots?

Laurie Taylor explores two distinct ways of understanding football’s place in contemporary society. He’s joined by Darragh McGee from the University of Bath, whose book Imitation Games charts the rapid rise of gambling and its growing entanglement with the sp...

What does it mean to undertake "ethical" research in complex and changing social settings?

Marion Vannier, from the University of Manchester, uses diaries and letters written by prisoners in her research with older men serving life sentences. Her work, including ‘Project Hope’, offers an insight into the experience of ageing behind bars, showing how ideas such as “hope” aren't always a positive. She discusse...

What does Émile Durkheim’s 1897 study of suicide tell us about the social conditions that shape whether life feels worth living and how does a current project add to our understanding?

Laurie Taylor is joined by Alexander Oaten, from the University of Lincoln, and Sarah Huque, from the University of Edinburgh who are involved in Discovering Liveability: Co-producing Alternatives to Suicide Prevention - a seven-year Wellcome Tr...

What does an 18-month study of residents on a housing estate in southern England tell us about living with debt? Laurie Taylor talks to Ryan Davey from Cardiff University about his new book The Personal Life of Debt - Coercion, Subjectivity and Inequality in Britain, which tries to understand how debt affects people emotionally as well as economically.

Laurie is also joined by Sarah Kerr (LSE International Inequalities Institute),...

What can the worlds of mountaineering and endurance running reveal about changing ideas of freedom, identity and the body? Laurie Taylor talks to Sarah Lonsdale, Senior Lecturer in Journalism at City, University of London, about her new book Wildly Different - her study of early 20th‑century women who sought autonomy through outdoor adventure. She focuses on the mountaineer Dorothy Pilley, whose Alpine achievements and reflective w...

What explains the apparent decline of grand theory in sociology, and what does this shift mean for the discipline today? Laurie Taylor asks whether sociologists are now less inclined to engage with large, overarching theoretical frameworks, and explores the reasons behind this change.

He is joined by Professor Les Back (University of Glasgow) and Professor Imogen Tyler (University of Lancaster), who consider whether theory still res...

What do we learn when a city’s future is defined not by rapid change, but by who leaves and who stays? Laurie Taylor looks at two neighbourhoods in different countries, during different periods in history and explores the human cost of gentrification - and what happens when the project fails.

Sharon Cornelissen (sociologist and Director of Housing at the Consumer Federation of America) discusses her latest book, "The Last Hous...

The winner of the British Society of Criminology Book Award in 2025 was Kate Herrity. Her study looks at the way our different senses contribute to the experience of prison life and is called Sound, Order and Survival in Prison: The Rhythms and Routines of HMP Midtown. Her research looks at the way for many prisoners, listening becomes a vital survival practice.

Kate Gooch is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Un...

How does the environment we move through shape the way we see and experience the world?

Laurie Taylor talks to Alex Prior (London South Bank University) about his research inside Westminster, where he walked alongside MPs and staff to uncover how the corridors of power feel different depending on who you are and what your job is. James Fletcher from the University of Bath worked on a project exploring what it’s like to navig...

How did the arrival of colour and film technology transform cinema and its cultural politics? Laurie Taylor explores the intertwined histories of technology, aesthetics, and identity.

Swarnavel Eswaran, filmmaker and scholar at Michigan State University, introduces us to the remarkable story of Kodak Krishnan – Eastman Kodak’s “man from the East.” Krishnan played a pivotal role in bringing American film techn...

DOGS – Laurie Taylor explores the making of the modern companion animal, from working animals to pampered pets. Chris Pearson, Professor of Environmental History at the University of Liverpool, charts the changing fortunes of hunting dogs, street dogs and show dogs, as they moved from the rural to the urban, shedding utilitarian roles to become cherished family members. Also, Mariam Motamedi Fraser, Honorary Research Fellow ...

Laurie Taylor talks to Simon Jarrett, Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, about the social history of people with learning disabilities, from 1700 to the present days. Using evidence from civil and criminal court-rooms, joke books, slang dictionaries, novels, art and caricature, he explores the explosive intermingling of ideas about intelligence and race, while bringing into sharp focus the lives of people often see...

Laurie Taylor talks to Louise Ryan, Professor of Sociology at the London Metropolitan University, about her oral history of the Irish nurses who were the backbone of the NHS for many years. By the 1960s approximately 30,000 Irish-born nurses were working across the NHS, constituting around 12% of all nursing staff. From the rigours of training to the fun of dancehalls, she explores their life experiences as nurses and also as Iris...

Laurie Taylor talks to Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City about her research into the propaganda formulas deployed by Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin over the last two decades. As the great granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union between 1958 and 1964, she offers personal, as well as political insights, into these developments, drawing on previo...

Laurie Taylor talks to Molly Conisbee, Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, about her ‘people’s’ history of mortality, beyond queens and aristocrats. From the plague pits to grave-robberies and wakes, she explores how cycles of dying, death and disposal have shaped our society. What did it mean to die well in the past, what does it mean now? Also, Chao Fang, Lectu...

Seth Rockman, Associate Professor of History at Brown University, talks to Laurie Taylor about his study into the stories of the plantation goods which reveal how the American national economy was once organised by slavery. He tracks the shoes made by Massachusetts farm women that found their way to the feet of a Mississippi slave and the entrepreneurs that envisioned fortunes to be made from “planter’s hoes”. A...