My first encounters with sociology were thoroughly tied up with what felt like a broader setting free of my identity. The chance to study the subject for the first time motivated what was to become a somewhat life-shaping decision to leave my rural town comprehensive at 16 and study A-levels at Plymouth College of Further Education. I didn’t really know what sociology was at the time but was taken by the idea of debating questions relating to education, religion, families, criminal behaviour and the like. It appealed to my developing interest in Politics (with a capital P) and contrasted with the more traditional offerings at school. It felt like something I could identify with as well as study. Conveniently, as it turned out, college also enabled a much-needed break from school itself, and the peers with whom I had negotiated – not particularly successfully – my early teens.

I’m not sure whether A-level sociology was quite what I expected – there was some politics in there, but the finer-grained analysis of different elements of the social world introduced all manner of questions that hadn’t occurred to me before. Centred, inevitably, on an early edition of Haralambos (a much maligned text that I actually rather admire), classes offered a mix of open debate and structure – and although the syllabus was limited, there was ample encouragement to think critically and question everything, as it seemed (Haralambos and Holborn, 1991). Looking back, this fitted perfectly with a developing (and fairly pretentious) sense of myself as ‘alternative’, both culturally and politically. Yet among this embrace of opposition and difference, the incessant practicing of exam answers in class was helping me to write and argue in an organised and coherent way, a rather less romantic but equally essential ingredient for any sociology career.

If my first encounters with sociology were orthodox, then disciplinary parameters became altogether more complex during my undergraduate degree in Media, Culture and Society at the wonderful Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham. Staff at the Centre had generated a uniquely fertile and supportive atmosphere of learning, their passion and commitment for their work and its broader significance transferring itself to students with an intensity I’m not sure I’ve seen before or since.