050 - Professional Development Workshop. A Conversation about Careers: How do Sociologists Make a Difference to the World?

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Description

Current estimates suggest that less than 25 per cent of PhDs will find career employment within the traditional academic market. This panel will feature sociologists who have made successful careers outside the academy. They will discuss their contribution to the design and development of products and services that have transformed everyday life, and will continue to do so. The panel will identify the skills that they have used in the process and explore some of the challenges of acting as a sociologist within non-traditional, market-oriented, organizational environments. Do these necessarily negate the historic normative concerns of sociology or do they offer new opportunities for bringing about positive social change? Can sociologists remind corporations that markets rest as much on moral as on economic foundations?

The session will be chaired by Gary David, who is the incoming President of the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology, and participants will include Robert Moore from IBM, Chloe Bird from RAND and Robert Dingwall, from Dingwall Enterprises Ltd, discussing their different experiences of working outside conventional academic niches.

Sub Unit

• Professional Development Workshop

Session Organizer

• Mardi Kidwell, University of New Hampshire

Leader

• Mardi Kidwell, University of New Hampshire

Presider

• Gary C. David, Bentley University

Panelists

• Robert J. Moore, IBM Research - Almaden

• Chloe E. Bird, RAND

• Robert Dingwall, Nottingham Trent University