Hudds professor receives honorary award from Lund University
Professor Jeff Hearn (right) at the Award Ceremony at Lund University
Fri, 24 Jun 2016 16:13:00 BST
The Lund citation read… “the impact factor of Professor Hearn’s work can only be described as massive…”
UNIVERSITY of Huddersfield Research Professor Jeff Hearn – highly influential for his work on sociology and gender, with special focus on men and masculinities, including violence directed at women and children – has been awarded an honorary doctorate by Lund University in Sweden.
It was given in recognition of the global impact of his research and for the extent of his collaborations with Swedish universities. He has been based in the Nordic region since the late 1990s and has held posts at the University of Oslo, at Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki and as Professor of Gender Studies at Linköping University in Sweden. Since 2013, he has been a Visiting Professor in the School of Humanities, Education and Sciences at Örebro University in Sweden.
At the University of Huddersfield, he is a Professor of Sociology, where he is involved in research projects, doctoral supervision and research development, and he is also a Fellow of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences.
When he received his Lund University doctorate, the citation traced his influence in the field of masculinity studies to the late 1970s. Since then, it was added, he has taken a world-leading position and “the impact factor of Professor Hearn’s work can only be described as massive”.
The citation added that: “Hearn’s research on men’s violence against women and children is particularly important as it has contributed new insights about patriarchy, power relations, and inequality which have been transformed into large-scale social policy programs which aim at preventing and combatting men’s violence in the domestic sphere, in organisations, and in society at large”.
Following the ceremony in which his doctorate was bestowed, Professor Hearn gave a special lecture at Lund University, in which he provided an overview of the growth of critical studies on men and masculinities.
Professor Hearn’s latest book is the critically acclaimed Men of the World, described by one academic expert as “an important, thought-provoking and incredibly timely book from one of the leading scholars in the field of men and masculinities. I cannot praise this wonderful book highly enough”. It was reprinted in a second edition after only a few months. A new collective book on memory work and older men is to be published soon, and other books on revenge pornography and on young people in Finland and South Africa are in the pipeline.
Originally from London, Professor Hearn studied at Oxford, Oxford Brookes, and Leeds universities, before teaching sociology, social policy, organisations and groups, men and masculinities, and social theory at Bradford University, where he completed his PhD on social planning, social theory and theories of patriarchy, and spent 21 years there, latterly as head of department.
In 1995 he moved to a Faculty of Social Sciences Research Chair at Manchester University and since the late 1990s he has lived in the Nordic region.
Professor Hearn states that: “Having worked over many years in gender studies, organisation and management studies, social policy, and sociology, I have a broad critical approach to questions of social and political change. However, the area I am probably most known for is research in the sub-field of critical studies on men and masculinities. This area I have been involved with since the late 1970s and have been genuinely surprised by how it has developed.”
Other major areas of research have included organisations, management and work, and violence, especially men’s violence to women and children.
