A New Political Generation

Ruth Milkman, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center will be returning to the School of Social Sciences in October 2016.

She will give a workshop for graduate students and a lecture on A New Political Generation: Millennial-Led Social Movements in the 21st Century USA.

Ruth is the 2016 American Sociological Association (ASA) president and specialises in the sociology of labour and labour movements. In August 2016, she presided over the 111th Annual ASA Annual Meeting in Seattle, which over 2000 sociologists attended.

At CUNY Ruth is also Research Director of the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, with which we have a summer placement programme for undergraduates. The ASA (Footnotes, Volume 43, Number 6, September/October 2015) describes her as a sociologist who does research that speaks to the issues of the day:

“That mindset has led her to crisscross the country, from the East Coast to California and back again, to dig into historical archives to uncover the struggles of women workers during the Great Depression, to hang out in factories with autoworkers trying to save an industry being dismantled, to follow immigrant janitors as they disrupted an entire city, and to trace the beginnings of the Occupy Wall Street uprising.”

She has published widely on migrant workers, auto workers, union organising, gender and work, precarious and low waged workers, paid family leave and the Occupy movement.

Ruth is no stranger to colleagues in Cardiff. She had previously delivered two keynotes here on the theme of globalisation and labour. One of them was funded by Thompson’s Solicitors and the second one was co-hosted by the School of Social Sciences and the Employment Relations Unit in Cardiff Business School.

Ruth’s lecture (12 October) will explore millennial-generation social movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. The workshop will focus on research she has done over the past few years with graduate students, i.e. case studies of organizing campaigns that require direct access to, and cooperation from, activists and advocates.

The lecture is open to all staff and postgraduate research students from Schools with the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, although pre-registration is essential. Undergraduate and postgraduate taught students from Social Sciences are also welcome to attend. To register please e-mail socsi-events@cardiff.ac.uk with your name, your School, and whether you are a member of staff or a student.