Professor Will Leggett

• D.Phil. Social and Political Thought, University of Sussex
• MA Sociology (with Distinction), University of Essex
• BA Hons. (First Class) Politics and Sociology, University of Warwick

• LH Power, Control and Resistance
• LH Contemporary Social Theory
• LM Transforming Identities 
• UG, MA and PhD Dissertation Supervision

Will has extensive experience of supervising PhDs to successful completion. He would particularly welcome applications from research students in the following areas:

• Political Sociology, including: state-society relations; ideology and political action; political behaviour and individualised political practices; governance and ‘behaviour change’
• The relationship between social theory and political analysis and action
• (Centre) Left political ideology, parties and movements

Will’s work analyses how governors and citizens adapt their political ideas and practices in the face of social change and shifting understandings of human behaviour. He is currently examining the political implications of increasingly individualised practices: these include attempts to shape citizens through ‘nudging’, or the adoption of mindfulness meditation or similar techniques. Will’s work is strongly theoretically driven, and he has developed a wide-ranging account of the society-politics relation in his most recent book, Politics and Social Theory: The Inescapably Social, The Irreducibly Political (Palgrave, 2017).

Will also has a longstanding research interest in progressive ideology and politics, social democracy and the British Labour Party. He has charted how centre-left modernisers developed and responded to narratives about social change (e.g. globalisation), and has offered critical alternatives across a range of publications including his After New Labour: Social Theory and Centre-Left Politics (2005, Palgrave Macmillan).