Derek Layder - Investigative Research

Derek Layderis Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester and Honorary Professor of Health and Life Sciences at De Montfort University. In 1974 he was appointed Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leicester and in 1976 was awarded a doctorate by the London School of Economics. In 1995 he was promoted to Reader, then to Professor in 1997 and to Emeritus Professor from 2002. He has held several visiting academic positions and has also held honorary visiting appointments at The Australian National University (as a Humanities Research Fellow) and the University of Western Sydney (as Eminent Research Visitor). He taught in areas of social theory, social psychology, social research methods and the philosophy of social sciences. He has published numerous academic articles and 12 books. Among his books, in the area of the philosophy of social science, he is the author of The Realist Image in Social Science (1990); in social theory, he has written Understanding Social Theory (second edition, 2006), as well as Modern Social Theory (1997). On research strategies and methods, he has authored New Strategies in Social Research (1993), Sociological Practice (1998) and Doing Excellent Small-Scale Research (2013). He has also written on intimacy, emotion and self-identity, including Emotion in Social Life (2004), Social & Personal Identity (2004) and Intimacy & Power (2009).