Head of School – Social Sciences Student Journal

Hello and welcome,

As Head of the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work I am delighted to be able to introduce this 2024 issue of the Social Sciences Student Journal.

One of the privileges of being Head of School is seeing just how much our students contribute to research and culture in our school, and this journal provides us with an excellent example of exactly that.

Our aim is that SSESW functions as a community of social scientists, from undergraduate student to professor, who all contribute to making a social difference in the world. If we want to create a just and happy society, the social sciences matter, and it is great to see research addressing important social issues in this edition of the journal.

It is also great to see the breadth and variety of our school reflected in these papers. We have contributions from across our programmes in Sociology, Criminology, Social Work and Social Policy, and one of the notable aspects of the articles to me is that in most cases you would be left guessing which programme the author is on. This is a testament to the strength of the work, that has taken an interdisciplinary perspective on key issues, and also illustrates that we should not see the social sciences as a set of distinct areas, but rather as an overlapping set in which each field provides complementary insights on social problems, which are often most powerful where they are combined.

I would like to thank Kelly Razey, student editor of the journal, and all the contributors for their work in preparing such an insightful and interesting set of papers.

Many thanks

Professor Muijs

1^st June 2024