Ranji Devadason

Biography

I am a lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social, Political and Global Studies. I joined Keele in January 2019, having previously worked at Bath Spa University and the University of Bristol. 

Research and scholarship

My research centres on the relationship between employment and society. Throughout my career, I have studied work identities and working lives at the local level - amongst young adults in Bristol (2000-2001) - at the European level, through the cross-national qualitative study I conducted for my ESRC-funded PhD (2002-2006) - and globally, in my investigation into the human consequences of mobility for transnational professionals employed by 'moral' and 'market' organisations (namely, a UN agency and a multinational corporation). The latter project was funded by a British Academy early career fellowship, which I held at the University of Bristol (2009-2011).

More recently, I was awarded British Academy funding for a collaborative project with colleagues in Germany entitled 'Transcultural encounters - new forms of work and entrepreneurship'  (2021-22). We convened a conference with scholars from the Humanities and Social Sciences to advance knowledge and understanding about how entanglements between cultures shape the performance of work in different contexts and over time.

Through my successive projects, I have engaged with questions about work identities and organisations, transnational mobility, migration and patterns of belonging within cities, young adulthood and the life course. I am keen to support PhD applications in any of these research areas.

I am committed to knowledge exchange and to ensuring the value of research to organisations, business, government and wider society. To that end, findings from my British Academy project about the challenges facing UN-professionals have been published in a report, Humanitarians without Borders.

Teaching

• SOC-10009 Social Inequalities in the Contemporary World
• SOC20046: Research Methods
• SOC20043: Globalization and its Discontents
• SOC-30042 Moving People: migration, emotion and identity
• GRT-40018 Advanced Qualitative Research 

In my teaching I aim to inspire and engage students by drawing on my knowledge and experience as a researcher in order to foster the development of their intellectual, imaginative and analytical abilities. I use case studies of work, workplaces and organisations to inform my teaching. In particular, in 2nd year lectures and seminars, we examine the human consequences of global capitalism through a focus on global factories, multinational corporations, call centres and migration. At postgraduate level I teach advanced qualitative research methods for the MRes Social Science Research Methods; this course provides a strong foundation for students embarking on their own research careers.