Image of Dr William McGowan

Dr William McGowan

School of Justice Studies

Faculty of Arts Professional and Social Studies

Email: W.J.McGowan@ljmu.ac.uk

See My Tutor

ORCID

I joined the School of Justice Studies in June 2020 having held previous lecturing and research posts at the University of Liverpool and LJMU. Drawing primarily on sociology, philosophy of social science, critical criminology and critical social policy, my research interests span two related areas within this interdisciplinary space: 1) violence, death and bereavement and 2) social theory and social science methodology.

My recent book, 'Victims of Political Violence and Terrorism: Making Up Resilient Survivors' (Routledge, 2022), is partly a study of how a well-known and certainly much used mental health discourse ('resilience') interacts with those facing immense and unusual adversity ('terrorism') in practice. Finishing this project has (re)sparked an ongoing interest around both popular and social scientific appeals to 'lived experience' and, relatedly, mental health classifications of more everyday kinds than are typically paired with spectacular violence such as 'terrorism'. In a similar vein, my recent work has focused on making sense of death and dying, including the politics associated with these ostensibly 'natural' phenomena, in more everyday and ordinary contexts. My ongoing research here is focused on the political and moral economies of the funeral industry, particularly how capital accumulation operates within this relatively overlooked sector, but I've also published recent articles and chapters on emotional labour, reflexivity, and the question of what should constitute the 'empirical' within qualitative and interpretive epistemologies. I continue to work with LJMU colleagues Will Jackson and Emma Murray on a long-term project we refer to as Criminological Artivism which explores, among other things, collaborative and public research dissemination. I am currently Guest Editing a Special Issue for the journal Mortality with Samantha Fletcher at Manchester Metropolitan University, entitled 'The New Normal? Marginalised Mortalities and Ordinary Deaths in Extraordinary Times', which will be published in late Spring (April/May) 2023.

Degrees

University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, PhD Sociology
University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, MA Social Science Research Methodology
University of Salford, United Kingdom, BSc Criminology

Certifications

University of Liverpool, Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy

Top