Orange is the New Black - S3!

The Differential Association is plunging into the world of Orange is the New Black yet again this summer to discuss season 3 of the phenomenally successful Netflix show. In the summer of 2014, we discussed the first two seasons, and this August we're returning to discuss the story so far.

In the interim, Orange is the New Black has spawned its own mini-industry, with seminars devoted to it, and with an exciting array of research which takes the show as its starting point; this research is coming from the fields of media studies, gender/queer studies, critical race studies and criminology and criminal justice issues.

This makes the release of the third season a really pertinent time to get together and discuss how the show is progressing, how characters are developing AND to discuss the reaction to the show as well.

Everyone is welcome! If you missed the first DA on the show, come along and partake in the second.

Date: Wednesday 26th August

Time: 6pm

Venue: Mulligan's on Poolbeg Street - distressingly, the door to the back room has been REMOVED. We shall struggle on, make and mend.

Death and Furniture - the DA talks epistemology

On Wednesday 29 April, The Differential Association will be discussing Edwards, Ashmore and Potter's 'Death and Furniture'. The article is a reflection on realism versus relativism and the arguments for and against social constructionism.

As well as discussing the questions of epistemology that this article throws up, we will also be applying these questions to our own research and experience, so that we can consider the theoretical preoccupations in light of tangible questions emerging in relation to understandings of crime and punishment.

When: 6pm Wed 29 April
Where: Mulligan's Back Room

Edwards, D., Ashmore, M. and Potter, J. (1995) 'Death and Furniture: The Rhetoric, Politics and Theology of Bottom Line Arguments Against Relativism', History of the Human Sciences, 8(2), 25-49.

Filler Elevator Music...

The Differential Association has been AWOL for some months now. Its winning mix of light-hearted banter, deep criminological ponderings and devotion to holding monthly meet-ups in Dublin pubs has no doubt been much missed.

There has been a very good reason for its prolonged absence.

Members of the DA have been beavering away tirelessly behind the scenes to arrange a conference in which a lot of what happens at our monthly meetings will take place on a larger scale.

On Friday 27 March, the inaugural Irish Postgraduate Criminology Conference will be held. The conference is being co-hosted and funded by Dublin Institute of Technology, and the School of Law at Trinity College Dublin. It will bring together dozens of postgraduate researchers in the fields of criminology and criminal justice, criminal law, historical perspectives on crime and many others, to provide a space for research, both Irish and international.

The invited speakers at the conference are Professor Ian O'Donnell, of University College Dublin, Professor Eamonn Carrabine of the University of Essex and Dr Claire Hamilton of NUI Maynooth. We feel hugely honoured to host these speakers, especially as each has authored a text which at one time was the selected reading material of a monthly meet-up!

Normal service will resume for all those criminology discussions following the conference!