Department Staff
Dr Karen Lumsden
Lecturer in Sociology
PhD in Sociology, MRes, MA (Hons) and PGCE from the University of Aberdeen
Tel: +44 (0)1509 228372
Fax: +44 (0)1509 223944
Email: K.Lumsden@lboro.ac.uk
Location: U4:17
Profile
Karen joined Loughborough University as a Lecturer in Sociology in 2013. She was previously a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Abertay Dundee and a Teaching Fellow at the University of Aberdeen. Karen has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Aberdeen.
She is a member of the Crime Science Research Group and the Cultural Communities, Cosmopolitanism and Citizenship (CulCom) Group at Loughborough University, the British Sociological Association, the British Society of Criminology, Brunel Moral Panic Studies Network, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Link to Karen's personal pages.
Research
Karen’s research interests include youth, car culture, crime and deviance, policing, moral panics, social networking and qualitative methods. Her doctoral research was an ethnographic study of boy racers in Aberdeen and the societal reaction to their behaviour. The research shed light on the common misconceptions concerning car modification (sub)cultures, which are labelled as deviant, risky and dangerous and whose rituals have helped fuel the myth of the boy racer. A monograph of Karen’s research, Boy Racer Culture: Youth, Masculinity and Deviance, has been published by Routledge (2013).
Current research focuses on car crime, the policing and regulation of motorists, and the framing of this in the context of the media and popular culture. Karen is currently working on research into the ‘crash for cash’ insurance fraud scam and its relationship with organised crime. Further research focuses on individuals' engagements in criminal/deviant behaviours on social networking sites such as 'trolling'. She is also editing a volume on Reflexivity in Criminological Research.
Karen has discussed her research on BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed and BBC Radio Scotland, and has provided comments on illegal street racing and girl racers for reports in The Times, The Mail on Sunday, and Sky’s iCrime.
Teaching
- Sociological Imagination 2 (12SSA006)
- Sociological Practice B (12SSC026)
Placement Coordinator for the Department of Social Sciences.
Recent publications
- Lumsden, K. (forthcoming 2013) '(Re)civilizing the Young Driver: Technization and Emotive Automobility', Mobilities.
- Lumsden, K. (forthcoming 2013) 'Survival of the Fastest: Ethical Dilemmas in Research with Boy Racers', YOUNG: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 21(3).
- Lumsden, K. (2013) Boy Racer Culture: Youth, Masculinity and Deviance, London: Routledge. Click here
- Lumsden, K. (2013) ‘You Are What You Research: Researcher Partisanship and the Sociology of the Underdog’, Qualitative Research 13(1): 3-18.Click here
- Lumsden, K. (2012) 'Policing the Roads: Traffic Cops, Boy Racers and Antisocial Behaviour Legislation', Policing and Society. Click here
- Lumsden, K. (2012) 'Fuelling the Panic: The Societal Reaction to Boy Racers', Working Paper No. 2012/1. Moral Panic Studies Network Working Paper Series, Brunel University, UK. Click here
- Lumsden, K. (2010) ‘Gendered Performances in a Male-Dominated Subculture: “Girl Racers”, Car Modification and the Quest for Masculinity’, Sociological Research Online 15(3). Click here
- Lumsden, K. (2009) ‘“Don’t Ask a Woman to Do Another Woman’s Job”: Gendered Interactions and the Emotional Ethnographer’, Sociology 43(3): 497-513. Click here
- Lumsden, K. (2009) ‘“Do We Look Like Boy Racers?” The Role of the Folk Devil in Contemporary Moral Panics’, Sociological Research Online 14(1). Click here.
View Publications on Central Database.