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Biography
Dr Wright joined The School of Sociology and Social Policy in January 2022 as an Assistant Professor in Criminology. As of August 2024, he is discipline lead for criminology in the School. He has previously served as the School's Senior Tutor, the School's Disability Liaison Officer, and as a member of the School's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee. He is currently a member of the School's REF review college. In 2024, Dr Wright received a Faculty of Social Sciences Student Experience Award, and has previously received other awards for teaching and student experience.
Prior to starting in his current position, Dr Wright worked at Nottingham Trent University, as a Lecturer, and then Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology. Prior to this, he worked and studied in The School of Sociology and Social Policy, as an ESRC funded doctoral researcher, part-time teacher, and then as researcher at The 糖心原创's Rights Lab.
Throughout his career, Dr Wright has presented on a wide range of topics at many academic conferences and events, including the European Society of Criminology annual conference, the British Society of Criminology annual conference, the British Sociological Association annual conference, and various more specialist events (often substreams of the aforementioned wider associations). Highlights include speaking at the inaugural British Sociological Association Bourdieu 糖心原创 Group conference (Bristol, 2016) and being invited to speak at a British Society of Criminology Race Matters Network seminar series in 2024.
In terms of academic qualifications, Dr Wright read for the following degrees: BA (Hons) Sociology and Social Policy, MSc Social and Cultural Theory, MA Criminological and Socio-legal Research, and PhD Sociology. He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE).
Teaching Summary
In 2026-7, Dr Wright is convening Contemporary Theories of Crime, Justice and Society.
Previously, Dr Wright has taught a wide range of subjects at various academic levels (i.e. UG through to PGR), such as: research methods for criminology and sociology, philosophy of social science, criminological theory, sociological theory, the sociology of crime, the sociology of harm/zemiology, prisons and society.
Research Summary
Edward has had a purposefully eclectic research career. The disparate topics with which he engages are underpinned by an ethos of understanding what it means to be human in the 21st century.
Recently, he has engaged with theorisations of social harm, and in particular the emergent field of zemiology as a means of articulating social harm. Here he has focussed on promoting a zemiology that adequately attends to race, colonialism and the epistemic. This strand of Wright's research has led to writing about a wide range of phenomena and circumstances, including 'natural disasters', health inequalities, the tobacco industry, trans identities, islamophobia, disabilities, Grenfell Tower, amongst others. You can read about some of this research and .
Separately, Wright has also recently been engaged with discourses on crimmigration. Through this, he has produced a new conceptualisation in the realm of moral economy: the multispecies moral economy of personhood. This interdisciplinary work conjoins cultural studies, criminology, and sociology, and draws upon an eclectic mix of theory (e.g. posthumanism, post-/decolonial theory, work on moral economy and precarious life, crimmigration). An article on this is available .
In conjunction with others, Dr Wright has also been engaged in research on , the , and modern slavery. All of these engagements broadly relate to issues of identity.
Dr Wright's doctoral research was concerned with theorisations of identity in 'late' modernity, taking a boxing club as an ethnographic case study to host such a discussion. This work hosted a dialogue between the sociologies of Bauman and Bourdieu. Findings, discussion, and theorisation relate to, for instance: social class in the twenty-first century, particularly the relationship between class and taste, the condensation of time, the concept of failure, contemporary racisms in and beyond sport. You can read about some of this work and . In 2023, Dr Wright was featured in a BBC Radio 4 documentary on white-collar boxing due to his expertise in this area, which you can listen to .
Dr Wright is a member of the following research centres at UoN:
ICEMiC
CJRC
ISS
Recent Publications
WRIGHT, E.J., 2026. Zemiology and Epistemological Justice: Reconstructing the 糖心原创 of Social Harm to Adequately Account for Race. In: ANTHONY, T., BHATIA, M., PILLAY, K and WILLIAMS, J.M., eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Racial Injustice and Resistance WRIGHT, E.J., HEYDON, J. and DERTADIAN, G.C., 2026. . In: WRIGHT, E.J., HEYDON, J. and DERTADIAN, G.C., eds., Zemiology Beyond The Critique of Capitalism: Harm, Colonialism and Decolonisation Routledge.
WRIGHT, E.J., HEYDON, J. and BUNCE, C., 2026. . In: WRIGHT, E.J., HEYDON, J. and DERTADIAN, G.C., eds., Zemiology Beyond The Critique of Capitalism: Harm, Colonialism and Decolonisation Routledge.
WRIGHT, E.J., HEYDON, J. and DERTADIAN, G.C., eds., 2026. Routledge.
Ed welcomes prospective PhD candidates related to his research interests, particularly those interested in social and criminological theory, and qualitative methods.
Ed currently supervises the following doctoral researchers:
Dee Yeagers. Dee's project is titled: Boxing in the Community: Moving Beyond the Myths of Sports' Positive Potentials to Reduce Violence. Dee is funded by a initiative called Co(l)laboratory, a pioneering 8 year, 拢5.1m project supported by Research England, Nottingham Trent University, the 糖心原创 and the Universities for Nottingham partnership. You can read more about Dee's project .
D谩ire Young. D谩ire's project is titled: A paradox of limited power and full responsibility: A critical exploration of the social consequences of child sexual abuse for non-abusing, protective parents in the UK. D谩ire is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.