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Lively, listenable and sociologically informed, Uncommon Sense questions taken-for-granted ideas about society. Hosted by sociologists Rosie Hancock and Alexis Hieu Truong, each podcast episode features a special guest taking a closer look at issues that touch us all.

Uncommon Sense is a project of the Sociological Review Foundation. As an academic charity whose mission is to promote sociological thinking to audiences beyond academia, we couldn’t be prouder of the impact the podcast has already had.

Over its first two seasons, Uncommon Sense has reached nearly 25,000 downloads around the world, and applied the insights of academics, authors, activists and artists to a broad range of subjects. We are excited to be sharing Season 3 with a global audience this year.

There is long and heartening tradition of listener support for independent podcasts. If you enjoy what you’ve heard and learned from the series so far, we hope you’ll consider supporting the creation of future episodes, and help Uncommon Sense keep on revealing the world through the eyes of sociologists for a long time to come.

About The Sociological Review Foundation

Who are we?

We are the home for critical sociological thinking and research in the UK and internationally. We provide a space to question taken for granted understandings of the social world, and a platform for thinking about alternative possibilities for what it might be.

The overarching structure for our work is the Sociological Review Foundation, a registered charity whose purpose is to advance the education of the public on the subject of sociology and related disciplines.

The Foundation is the vehicle by which profits from the sale of The Sociological Review journal are used to support our charitable aims.

What do we do? 

Engage with publics in academia and beyond.

Our journal, The Sociological Review, is a highly respected, internationally focused peer-reviewed academic journal. Founded in 1908, it is the UK’s oldest sociology journal.

It publishes theoretically advanced and methodologically rigorous studies that look at issues of the social world through the lens of the sociological imagination. Its regular journal issues are supplemented by special sections and special issues, and a twice-yearly Monograph series.

It is also part of our mission to promote sociological thinking to audiences beyond academia; to raise wider awareness for key debates that shape contemporary societies; and to direct and support projects that directly intervene in emerging issues.

We do this in a number of ways, including our open-access, general-interest Magazine; our Uncommon Sense podcast and partnerships with other sociologically imaginative podcasts; and our collaboration with the quarterly magazine Discover Society.

We have also facilitated the Connected Sociologies Curriculum project, which provides resources for students and teachers interested in decolonising school, college and university curricula. In 2020, we launched the Solidarity and Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic project, which documented the lived experiences, caring strategies and solidarity initiatives of people around the world during the pandemic.

Support early career researchers

We are proud to support scholars across their careers, both inside and outside of the university environment, and early career scholars in particular.

We offer bursaries for unfunded PhD and postdoctoral researchers to attend our events, and organise events specifically for ECRs, including annual writing retreats. Our magazine regularly showcases the best in writing for general audiences by ECRs from around the world, and we prioritise the appointment of early career researchers to The Sociological Review editorial board, where they receive training on refereeing and other skills under the mentorship of an experienced editor.

The Sociological Review Fellowship

The Sociological Review Foundation has a historic commitment to early career researchers through its fellowship scheme, which is based at Keele University. Every year, the fellowship provides an early career scholar with the opportunity of spending a year writing a first monograph or converting PhD research into journal articles.

Events

Each year, we organise or fund in-person, online and hybrid events that bring together established and new researchers in the field of sociology and cognate disciplines.

These include The Sociological Review Annual Lecture and the Sociological Review Seminar Series. Via the latter initiative, the Foundation funds scholars to share important new research findings with fellow academics and the public alike.

In 2024, The Sociological Review Foundation will host the Undisciplining II conference in Salford, Greater Manchester from 10-12 September.

Why do we do this work?

In order to imagine a more just future, we aim to challenge sociology’s existing boundaries through conversations with other disciplines and cultures in order to open up space for creativity, and to develop a sociological imagination that is rigorous, critical, engaged and accountable.

To find out more about the Foundation’s aims and mission, read Our Manifesto.

For more information about the broad range of work we do, read our inaugural Annual Report.