Sociological analysis in the interpretive tradition; classical and contemporary social theory and methodology; phenomenonolgy; hermeneutics; ethnography, psychoanalysis; sociological-philosophical affinities in literature and poetics; confluences between critical theory and poststructuralism; the conditions of postmodernity; cultural and political anthropology; cities and forms of urban life; identity, difference and social antagonism; memory, fantasy, collective representations, the symbolic order. Current work: Social pathologies of contemporary civilization; effects of anomie and liminality on health, well-being and human flourishing; the symbolic disorders and socio-psychopathologies associated with accelerated modernization, globalization and risk; namely: ennui, anomie, melancholia, affective disorders, psychoses, and the hysterical conditions of the Twenty-first century. As a consequence of this interpretive work, I am interested in epidemology, public health and social policy. The sociology of the city, environment and human ecology; planning, development, underdevelopment and sustainable development; housing, dwelling, architecture & design; the symbolic order and imaginative structure of the house and home; the anthropologically deep-seated relationship between house, home and civilization, and between architecture, mind, and the formation of subjectivity, informed by Weber, Heidegger, Foucault, etc. Rural, urban and suburban forms of life, and the liminal zones at their interfaces; The city and urban culture, informed primarily by Simmel, Benjamin and Joyce; the generation and legacy of cultural capital in Europe's 'cultural capitals'; the libidinal economy of the city; desire, artifice, and presentation of self; the child in the city, moral education and the cultivation of cosmopolitanism; the sociology of money and global financial markets.. The sociology of formal

Director, graduate programme in Health, Civilization & Sustainable Development, UCC; co-founder & board member MPlan (Planning & Sustainable Development) UCC;- External Examiner, MA program in Sociology, Anthropology & Social Policy, Glasgow University; External Examiner, Anthropology, DBS. 2003-'05; Editorial Reviewer for intnl jnls: Theory, Culture & Society; Social Movement Studies; Space and Culture; Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology; Research Proposal Reviewer, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) 1996 -1999. PhD's completed: Dr S. Malesevic (2000) "Democracy, Legitimacy and the New State: Political Culture in the Former Yugoslavia" (currently Lecturer, Politics & Sociology, NUIG; Dr D. Gresisshaber (1998) "Representations of Africa in Ireland" (currently Public Relations consultant, Hamburg. PhD's in progress: O'Brien "Civilization and Intoxication" (Defending 2007; P. Kearney "Transformative Experiences and Quality of Life"; J. McNamera "American Nationalism"; B. O'Sullivan "Planning and sustainable development in the countryside" MA's:I have supervised over 25 MA dissertations. Former MA students are presently Doctoral candidates elsewhere, at Cambridge, at York and UBC Canada, at Emory, USA, and Steigen, Germany.Identify your top three research outputs (for the review period Jan 03 - Sept 08) and describe their significance (1 page maximum). Top three research outputs are two books (co-authored with Carmen Kuhling) entitled Collision Culture: Transformations of Everyday Life in Ireland (2004) and Cosmopolitan Ireland: Globalization and Quality of Life (2007) and more recently the article "Obesity, insatiability and the mutation of the symbolic order of the meal", in International Political Anthropology (2008).The first two books are required reading for courses, usually a

As well as a full range of undergraduate teaching I have been centrally involved in developing postgraduate education in UCC and nationally. I established and co-ordinate a graduate programme in Health, Civilization & Nature at UCC; I am a co-founder & board member MPlan (Planning & Sustainable Development) UCC.I restructured the graduate sociology in UCC as a modularized and ects weighted programme.I initiated, led and brought to fruition an interdisciplinary, inter-institutional Graduate Research Education Programme (GREP) PhD Social Science at UCC.I led the development of graduate education in the Irish Social Science Platform