In addition to lecturing at the University of Huddersfield, Dr Smith is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Kansas. He also holds Honorary and Visiting Research Fellowships at the Universities of Glasgow and Nottingham respectively.

Born and raised in South Australia, Dr Smith graduated with a BA (Honours) in Anthropology from the University of Adelaide before coming to the United Kingdom to commence postgraduate research with the support of a British Chevening scholarship. After graduating with his PhD in 2006, he has held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh before taking up the Sociological Review Fellowship at Keele University. He was then a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. Most recently, Dr Smith held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in Sociology at the University of Birmingham. He is also series editor of the book series ‘New Ethnographies’ for Manchester University Press.

Prior to leaving his country of origin, Dr Smith worked as a Researcher for two Members of the Federal Parliament of Australia, including one Federal Cabinet Minister. He has also worked as a Researcher for both the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament.

Teaching responsibilities

Teaching: Investigating the Social World

With the financial support of the New York-based Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Dr Smith carried out ethnographic fieldwork during his PhD on activism, constitutional change, electioneering and local politics in the rural southwest of Scotland. His research has been featured on BBC Radio Four’s social sciences program ‘Thinking Allowed’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/thinkingallowed_20050824.shtml and he is the author of ‘DEVOLUTION AND THE SCOTTISH CONSERVATIVES: BANAL ACTIVISM, ELECTIONEERING AND THE POLITICS OR IRRELEVANCE’ (2011, Manchester University Press).

With financial support from the British Academy, ESRC and Leverhulme Trust, Dr Smith has carried out postdoctoral research on the interface of politics, religion and science in the USA. This project has explored new conflicts over religion and science in Kansas City, USA, where recent policy debates over embryonic stem cell research and human cloning have exposed deep, moral fissures amongst American conservatives. This research will lead to outputs including journal articles and a book monograph and will address interdisciplinary debates about how to apprehend the crisis of scientific and other forms of expertise in divided publics and post-secular societies. Drawing on his fieldwork amongst Republican Party activists in Kansas, Dr Smith is currently writing a book called THE UNMAKING OF MODERATE AMERICA

Media enquiries

'Dr Smith welcomes media enquiries concerning his research interests in American and British politics, public sociology and the sociology of religion and science. Most recently, he has been interviewed by the Economist and the New York Times about the 2010 US elections.'

• American pragmatism and the Chicago School
• Comparative and Public Sociology
• Political ethnography
• Political sociology of the UK and USA
• Sociology of Religion and Science