Role
Associate Lecturer of Sociology
Qualifications & background
My academic training is in sociology and philosophy. I hold a Bachelor of Arts (Double Major) in sociology and philosophy and a Master of Arts in sociology, each undertaken at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. I am in the latter stages of writing up my Ph.D. thesis begun with the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. My postgraduate research aims to unravel discursive contradictions in the texts of Hannah Arendt and evaluate their assumptions against those delineating the discipline of sociology.
Professional membership
Member of the British Sociological Association
Teaching interests
For the academic year 2011-2012, I contribute to teaching SOC1501, SOC1502, SOC1503, SOC2503, and SSP1002.
The majority of my teaching this year is made up of lectures and 1st and 2nd year tutorials although I help with some seminars. During my time at Plymouth I have taught a range of introductory sociology, social theory and research methods, as well as focused modules concerning, for example, social change and the philosophy of the social sciences.
Research interests
Social and political theory; philosophy of social science; cultural studies and the media; critical discourse analysis; authorship and auto/biography; Arendtian political theory; the discourses of regulation and professionalism.
Other research
Between 2010 and 2011 I was employed as part of a research team to investigate the discursive meanings of the proposed system of medical Revalidation at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, Plymouth. My specific remit was to investigate what Revalidation meant for policy (Stage 1 of the research programme) and involved organizing and conducting primary research using semi-structured interviews with elite medical leaders. Interviews were transcribed and coded using NVivo qualitative data management software and then analysed using critical discourse analysis. A report has been submitted to the Health Foundation, the research sponsors.
I am completing a contract to revise and update the online resources for the Oxford University Press publication Sociology 4e by James Fulcher and John Scott. The work involves providing additional supplementary resources for both lecturers and students using the Fulcher and Scott text at university level teaching.
A further interest is the purported rift between what is often characterised as avant-garde and mainstream traditions in contemporary British poetry. In particular, I am interested in how this divide is articulated by poets themselves, if or how it demarcates their poetic communities, and how it contributes to a political struggle over the ground and constitution of poetry.
Publications
Clark, J., Archer, J., Corrigan, O.P., & Regan de Bere, S. ‘Revalidation as Mechanism for Professional Cultural Change? A Foucauldian analysis of the Purposes and Aims of the Proposed Policy for UK Medical Revalidation’. Social Science Perspectives on Health Professions Education: an International Symposium, University of Toronto, May 2011.
Clark, J., Archer, J., Corrigan, O.P., & Regan de Bere, S. ‘What is at the heart of Revalidation?’. The Third Annual Academic Meeting of the Academy of Medical Educators, London, January 2011.
Clark, J. ‘Hannah Arendt: Methodological Considerations
.’ Social and Political Thought Conference 2002, Centre for Social and Political Thought, University of Sussex.
Clark, J. ‘Breaking the Cycle: The Concept of Movement in the Work of Hannah Arendt’. MA thesis, 1997, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Clark, J. ‘Fredric Jameson’s Postmodern Marxism’
Codgito, Volume 4, 1996 (https://builder.ucs.mun.ca/temp/philosophy/resources/v4doc2.html).
