Empowering social change through research

The Analysing Social Change Research Group is dedicated to the methods and theories that underly social research in diverse thematic areas. Contemporary society is experiencing rapid social change, with new and constantly changing social challenges and issues. We are in a period of unprecedented transformation in Irish society economically, politically, socially, legally and culturally. We are witnessing dramatic shifts in work and welfare, social identities, political affiliation and movements, gender relations, family formation and the experience of childhood, political movements, demands for equality and restitution for historical abuses, modes of communication and community formation through the internet and social media and debate about previously silenced and private issues.It is critical that such social changes are appropriately analysed. To this end, the ASC Research Group focused on knowledge production, in the sense of how social change can be conceptualized using different theoretical lenses, and the methods through which data on social change are produced and analysed. While it is inevitable that studies of social change will focus on a dizzying array of particular topics, they share the underlying conceptual question of what is causing such change, what its broader implications are, and how social changes can be mapped.