Bangor Lecturer Takes Expertise to Finland

Dr Stefan Machura, Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Research at the Bangor School of Social Sciences, recently spent a week as a Visiting Lecturer at a Finnish university.   

The University of East Finland, Kuopio, is one of Bangor University’s Erasmus partners. Erasmus’s Visiting Lecturer scheme enables scholars to spend time as guest academics in partnering institutions throughout the EU.

During his visit to Finland, Dr Machura delivered a course on ‘Crime and the Media’, where students discussed the social and political backgrounds of crime films including Young Mr. Lincoln, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, Open Doors and The Lives of Others. The course concluded with a lecture on how the media affects trust in legal institutions, based on a chapter Dr Machura has contributed to the forthcoming book Understanding Law in Society: Developments in Socio-legal Studies.

In Kuopio, Dr Machura found himself in very different surroundings to those of Bangor: “When I arrived, The Old Kuopio Museumsnow was still piled up two meters high – you could even see fishermen at work on frozen seas”. He added: “Kuopio is an interesting place to visit. Although the university has ultra-modern architecture, the city itself has dozens of old wooden houses and a number of buildings from the Russian Empire.”

Prior to Dr Machura’s Erasmus trip, the School of Social Sciences was visited by another Erasmus participant, Dr Tatiana Golova from the Institute of Sociology in Magdeburg, Germany. Whilst at Bangor, Dr Golova, a lecturer in Macrosociology, delivered lectures and seminars at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and even contributed to one of Dr Machura’s own modules. Lecture topics included 'Transnational cooperation between the Western European and Russian right-wing music scenes' and 'Spatial structuration of social movements'. She also delivered a methods workshop on ethnographical research to MA students.

Dr. Golova’s expertise is in political sociology and social movements, urban sociology and right-wing radicalism. Recent publications include 'Spaces of collective identity', 'Hate crime in Russia', and 'The right-wing youth music scene in Russia'.

Publication date: 3 May 2011