CRAG is internationally prominent and hosts numerous international visitors. Research within CRAG examines how gender differences in the earlier life course in terms of paid work, family roles and social relationships influence the ability of women and men to live fulfilling and socially engaged lives, while coping with ageing and increasing disability. CRAG has completed projects on food and older people, older men’s social worlds and healthy lifestyles, women and pensions, the social influences on sleep in children, teenagers, couples and mid to later life women, and is currently leading a New Dynamics of Ageing collaborative research project, SomnIA, on ‘Sleep in Ageing’.

CRONEM is a multidisciplinary research centre in the field of nationalism, ethnicity and multiculturalism. It brings together those at the University of Surrey and Roehampton University who are engaged in issues which lie at the nexus between nation, ethnicity, multiculturalism, citizenship and migration. Reflection on these issues through arts and humanities disciplines provides a distinctive focus for the Centre. 

CRONEM focuses on crucial developments within contemporary society by drawing on the expertise of those working in internationally renowned academic units across the areas of anthropology, dance, economics, education, European studies, policy studies, politics, psychology and sociology. It also benefits from the expertise of an Advisory Board composed of renowned figures from academia, government, media and user groups.

Now in its 16th year, the CAQDAS Networking Project is internationally known for pioneering work on systematic qualitative data analysis techniques, providing practical support and training generations of researchers in the use of qualitative software. CAQDAS hosts QUIC (Qualitative Innovations in CAQDAS), a new ESRC-supported node of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods. QUIC delivers its ongoing and well-established Training and Capacity Building programme in qualitative software, and explores three new breaking developments. The first concerns qualitative software support for integrating qualitative and quantitative data in mixed method research. The second relates to multistream visual data. The third concerns geo-referencing qualitative software to enable users to add a spatial dimension to qualitative data analysis. QUIC explores these three new areas by applying them to the field of environmental risk.

The group conducts empirical research on the principal institutions of the criminal justice system, notably the police, the prison and probation services, the voluntary criminal justice sector and the courts. We also explore more theoretically oriented work on the nature of deviance and social control in contemporary society. Members of the group also participate in the Crime and Security initiative.

The Crime and Security initiative seeks to provide a network to bring together colleagues from within the Faculty and across the University who have an interest in research in this area. In this way exploitation of the considerable strengths derived from a history of existing scholarly activity is achieved. This will cover a varied range of disciplines for the development of new research collaborations which chime with contemporary evidencebased policy issues and contribute to emergent developments within crime and security. Members of the group are part of the multi-institutional Sexual Offences Research Initiative and the Groupe Européen de Recherche sur les Normativités.

As a leading centre of expertise in social research methodology, this flagship research group focuses on developing methodologies, cutting-edge methods and innovation in the application of new research technologies. Current research priorities include: work on social simulation; statistical modelling; visual methods; secondary analysis of datasets; GIS techniques, especially in relation to qualitative methods; virtual methods; advanced computationally supported qualitative methods; and new technologies for social research. There is a special interest in the use of mixed methods, methodological integration and triangulation, and methodological synthesis.  

This work is integrated through specialist advanced methodology centres, including CRESS (Centre for Research in Social Simulation) and CAQDAS (Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Networking Project). We also host two nodes of the ESRC-funded National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM): the SIMIAN node, in collaboration with CRESS; and QUIC (Qualitative Innovations in CAQDAS), in collaboration with CAQDAS.  

DWRC aims to develop and apply a process of user-centred innovation in digital media technology, based on the interplay of user, design, business and technology research. We also strive to apply this technology for social benefit through various forms of inclusive research and design.

Current research includes a combination of PhD and funded research projects in the areas of digital photography, community-generated media, digital product design and ICT for older people. Research is funded by UK and EU research councils, and industrial sponsors such as Kodak, Vodafone, Microsoft and British Telecom.

The focus of research in the Identities, Generation and Everyday Life grouping is on contemporary social identities and their expression in socio-cultural forms, with particular emphasis on ethnicities, culture and identity, marginalised sexual identities, and youth cultures. We also explore contemporary social life and social issues in relation to later life and ageing, childhood, and youth within communities. Innovative research is undertaken on the practices (and doing) of everyday life in respect of identity, sleep, health, work, popular culture, and sexuality, particularly investigating these within the frameworks of age, generation and the life course. Finally, we engage with questions concerning health and welfare provision in the context of ethnicities, gender, generation and age.  

The Media, Culture and Communication research grouping conducts research across a wide range of subjects in culture, media and new media – from the theory and philosophy of media and communications, to political communications research, projects on the internet and mobile media, research on audiences, as well as explorations of 'high', 'popular', youth- and sub- cultures (especially as they are articulated via new/media). Members of the group bring critical, sociological perspectives to bear on some of the most pressing questions to emerge from a fast-changing new/media and cultural landscape - How do our changing communicative practices transform our political, social and cultural lives? What roles do (intergenerational) sociality and affect have to play in media and communications? How are culture, society and economy mediated and (re)produced through changing media technologies, institutions, texts and contexts? What roles do media and communication play in democracy, equality and governance?

RESOLVE is a new and exciting collaboration located entirely within the University of Surrey, involving four internationally acclaimed departments: the Centre for Environmental Strategy, the Surrey Energy Economics Centre, the Environmental Psychology Research Group and the Department of Sociology. Funded by ESRC, RESOLVE aims to unravel the complex links between lifestyles, values and the environment. 

Our work on science and technology develops sociological frameworks to examine a wide array of contemporary developments, with particular concentrations of effort on contemporary communications media, the applications of computational technologies such as the grid and high-performance computing in the social and natural sciences, sociology of the environment, public understanding of science and social aspects of risk.

We have pioneered empirical research on the sociology of sleep since 2001. Research includes recently completed studies on ‘Sleep in Ageing Women’ (EU-funded), on ‘Couples and Sleep’ (ESRC-funded), and a four-year EU Marie Curie Research Training Network on ‘The Biomedical and Sociological Effects of Sleep Restriction’. Recent research includes leading a four-year multi-research council-funded project on ‘Sleep in Ageing’ (SomnIA), which involves six disciplines and four universities. 

This new grouping conducts novel research into the historical core of sociology: macro-level structures, and processes and outcomes of social inequalities. Sociological analyses of work include explorations of non-standard employment, ‘body work,’ as well as cross-national comparative studies of institutional effects on class and gendered divisions of paid and unpaid work. Also of interest are inequalities that unfold along the life course in such areas as criminal justice, education, family, health, earnings, and occupations. New research areas include environmental inequalities, and inequalities associated with new media and the Internet. Organisational subjects span the management of art museums and galleries and cultural policy from a neo-institutional perspective, to organisational features of police forces. These topics are explored with a mix of methods, from ethnography to comparative research using large-scale secondary longitudinal datasets.