Joy Zhang

I was really delighted to be nominated for the Above and Beyond teaching award this year. Thank you for the anonymise student(s) for this recognition.

It’s been a challenging year. COVID restrictions aside, I’ve revamped both the Autumn term undergraduate contemporary social theory module to include postcolonial theories, social movements, and the social theories of ‘things’ and the Spring term postgraduate module Technology, Society and Policy. I think it takes a lecturer to know how much ‘labour’ (physically, intellectually and emotionally) goes behind the writing of every hour of lecture, but it really takes a student to tell you how well your ‘cunning plan’ works. You can’t imagine how elated I was when I received emails in the Spring in which students telling me how much they miss our social theory class!

Another moment of ‘ecstasy’ was when I was marking Sociology of the Global South module essay last week. One student took up the challenge of writing an inauguration speech as the newly elected President of the International Sociological Association. The research agenda he set out for global sociology was ‘interspecies cosmopolitanism’. – I really hope he will make a version of this speech sometime in the future.