The BSA postgraduate forum is sponsoring an event of  Social Class and Educational Aspiration for postgraduates involved in this area of research. The Conference and Workshop will be hosted by the  University of East London On Tuesday 20th and Wednesday 21st  March 2012. The event is structured around five keynote lectures by leading social class and education academics alongside two tutorial PhD workshops, conducted by the academic speakers. Conference abstracts  are sought from 18 postgraduates; eight of whom will be selected to give a 20 minute talk and the rest will be invited to give a poster presentation. There is an option to only give a poster presentation but you must still send an abstract. It is intended that the conference theme is interpreted widely, however the following themes  in relation to social class are of particular interest:

·         Educational aspiration,
·         Educational attainment/achievement,
·         Access to higher education,
·         Recent changes in educational policies,
·         Theoretical and methodological discussions on social class and education.

If you are interested in taking part in this event please see http://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/postgrad.htm   for further details on how to apply. You will need to complete the application form and write an abstract of no more than 250 words on how your research demonstrates a sociological and/or educational critical engagement with social class and education – in particular educational aspiration.

If you have any further queries please contact Jenny and Tamsin at: sceaevent2012@gmail.com .  The deadline for applications is Monday February 6th 2012.  Please note that this event is free for all participants who are BSA members and £25 to all non-BSA members. All participants are expected to be present for the full two days.

Check out what we’ve been making with Bundlr, a new online curation tool:

• The Sociological Imagination
• Public Scholarship and Private Commitments
• The best of SI

What do you think? We’re still in the early stages of figuring out Bundlr but expect to see much more of these. We’d also like to get more people involved in the curation: themes to be suggested by readers and then curation for a bundle on that theme would take place through open-ended collaboration?

A quick flag up to any interested readers that the Sociology Department at the University of Warwick now has a blog and twitter feed. Although Sociological Imagination has no formal connection to the department, a number of people involved in the site are based there & many of the SI podcasts have been with academics in the department. So do check it out!

(Also out of interest does anyone know of other UK sociology departments that have blogs? If so please let us know either in comments below or via e-mail. Thanks!)

Zygmunt Bauman will be keynote speaker at this year’s British Sociological Association conference in Leeds this April. He will also speak to postgraduates at the BSA Postgraduate Day which is the day before the start of the main conference. There will also be a number of showings of the Bauman documentary at the conference.