My expertise and interests are in the area of environmental sociology and more specifically the social science of climate change.  I was President of the Research Committee "Environment and Society"(RC24) of the International Sociological Association from 2006 to 2010.   I was an Associate Editor of the journal Environmental Sociology from its founding in 2015 until 2020 and remain on its international editor board.  I have a Ph.D and an M.A. in sociology from the University of Toronto and an Honours B.Sc. in physics from the University of Ottawa.

My most recent publication is the following. 

Murphy, Raymond (2024). "What is undermining climate change mitigation? How fossil-fuelled practices challenge low carbon transitions" Energy Research and Social Science 108 (February 2024)  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103390

The books I have published are the following.

Murphy, Raymond (2021). The Fossil-Fuelled Climate Crisis: Foresight or Discounting Danger? Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan Springer Nature

Murphy, Raymond.  (2009). Leadership in Disaster: Learning for a Future With Global Climate Change.  Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 417 pages (excerpted in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society March 2010 Vol. 91 Issue 3 p. 390). 

Murphy, Raymond.  (1997). Sociology and Nature: Social Action in Context.  Boulder, Colorado:  Westview Press. 321 + xiiii pages. (It was named by the journal Choice of the American Library Association as one of the Outstanding Academic Books published in the United States in 1997).

Murphy, Raymond.  (1994). Rationality and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry into a Changing Relationship.  Boulder, Colorado: Westview. 294 + xiii pages.  (It was translated and republished in Korean, Seoul: Hanul, 2000).

Murphy, Raymond.  (1988). Social Closure: The Theory of Monopolization and Exclusion.  Oxford, England: Oxford University Press (Clarendon).  276 pages.  (It was translated and republished in Japanese, Tokyo: Shinyosha, 1994; two chapters were translated and republished in German, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2004).

Murphy, Raymond. (1979).  Sociological Theories of Education, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979, 223 pages.