Teresa Piacentini is delighted to be re-joining Sociology in the School of Political and Social Science from February 2014.  Teresa completed her PhD in Sociology in the School in December 2011, which was an ethnography of the associational lives of African community groups in Glasgow. But her journey towards her PhD began much earlier; in 2000, when she began working as a community interpreter in Glasgow, following the introduction of Dispersal Policy in 1999. This professional experience was critical to stimulating her sociological imagination and was the beginning of a much deeper personal and political engagement with issues around migration, experiences of settlement and questions of what it means to belong.  Working in the University since 2012, she is moving from the School of Education, having spent the last 2 years as a researcher on an interdisciplinary research project. 

Teresa will be teaching on Sociology undergraduate courses and is very much looking forward to engaging with students as they develop their own sociological imaginations.  An experienced qualitative researcher and ethnographer, Teresa’s research interests lie in the broad field of migration studies, covering the various aspects of social, cultural and political life affecting experiences of ‘settlement’, integration and belonging.  Her work is developing in engaging with super-diversity and what that might mean both subjectively and concretely for migrants and society. Key disciplines represented in her work are sociology, migration studies scholarship, ‘race’ and ethnicity research, community justice and social research. Her interests relate directly to current debates within the social sciences around inequality, inclusion, identities, engagement and social change, and how these are shaping public and policy understandings of society.

Teresa is actively engaged in a wide range of knowledge exchange activities spanning her professional career in academia and in professional practice in community education and interpreting, and is a member of a number of research networks and professional associations.

First published: 27 January 2014

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