Graham Crow is Professor of Sociology and Methodology at the University of Edinburgh where he has worked since 2013. He was previously at the University of Southampton for 30 years, having studied at the Universities of Oxford and Essex. He has written numerous books, chapters and articles on a range of subjects including community and family relations, comparative sociology, sociological theory and research methodology, including ethics.

His current project on careers and retirement builds on earlier research and publications on the lives and achievements of sociologists both past and present, and on the study of endings. His book The Art of Sociological Argument (Palgrave, 2005) explores the careers of eight prominent sociologists (Émile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Karl Marx, Charles Wright Mills, Ann Oakley, Talcott Parsons and Max Weber), while the article (with Naoko Takeda) ‘Ray Pahl’s sociological career: fifty years of impact’ in Sociological Research Online (2011) and the book Divisions of Labour Revisited (Manchester University Press, 2017, co-edited with Jaimie Ellis) consider the life and work of R. E. Pahl.

He is currently writing a book on Ann Oakley for the Emerald Guides to Social Thought series. He is a member of the British Sociological Association, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and was a member of the Sociology sub-panel in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. He was Deputy Director of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods from 2006 to 2014 and Director of the Scottish Graduate School for Social Science from 2013 to 2016.