Terry Au-Yeung is an interdisciplinary researcher and a Postdoctoral Researcher with the ERC-funded ‘Turning Violence’ team. His work is dedicated to innovating social scientific methodology, particularly in analysing social life in context using new forms of data, such as audio-visual data, and their related moral practices. In the current project, he explores the reflexive questions of how violence is made visible and how it can be better understood and potentially sanctioned through video.

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Terry Au-Yeung is an interdisciplinary researcher and a Postdoctoral Researcher with the ERC-funded ‘Turning Violence’ team.

In the ‘Turning Violence’ project, he continued his research by exploring the reflexive relationship between social competence (ethno-methods) and the production of temporal data on violence scenarios. This data then informed social scientific analytics for interpretation. His focus lies in understanding how ordinary people can effectively anticipate and identify the onset of violence and create violence videos. He also considers how increased visibility of violence’s embodied nature can enhance societal descriptions and practical responses.

Before joining Leiden, he developed a profile in emergency and policing studies. He was part of the Visions of Policing team (UK team, led by Prof Robin Smith) on an Open Research Area Round 7 project. This project conducted hybrid field and video ethnographic work to explore the multi-layered temporalities that contribute to violence resistance and resilience in policing. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral researcher for the Stampedes project at Keele University (Exercises and authorities strand, led by Prof Clifford Stott). He applied video analytical techniques to analyse CCTV footage of actual incidents on a major UK metropolitan transport network. This research informed evidence-based emergency planning and training. His work has been published in journals such as the British Journal of Social Psychology and is featured in the upcoming book Analysing Conversations in Forensic Settings (Palgrave).

This scholarly research focused on the sociological implications of the novel and the saturated production of visual-audio records of social life from an ethnomethodological perspective. Specifically, it applied phenomenological conceptions of temporality and perception to explore how this active pro-sumption generates new social phenomena and order. It also considered how social scientists could use these visual-audio records to develop a more rigorous understanding of social life and innovate social scientific methodologies for comprehending “what the world is made of.”

Drawing inspiration from Goffman’s frame analysis, he introduced his concept of projection to replace action as a general analytical unit for any meaningful spontaneous activity by interactants. This theoretical innovation enabled his analysis to sustain and describe different levels of temporality within the training workshop as a non-exclusive and mutually constitutive gestalt-contexture. He named this analytical method Projection Analysis (PA) after its basic unit. He has published the theoretical foundations of PA in two journal articles: one in The Sociological Review and the other in Philosophia Scientiæ.

Currently, Terry serves as co-convenor of the Hong Kong Studies Association. Before returning to academia, he worked as a project manager and industry trainer at a social enterprise focused on migrant workers’ issues in Southeast Asia.

Publications