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• School of Social and Political Studies

Sociology

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Office Hours

Semester Times: Thursdays 10-12

Qualifications

• BA (University of York)
• MA (University of York)
• PhD (University of Edinburgh)
  

Research interests and Current Projects

I'm currently writing a book, Popular Music, Technology and Society (Sage) which aims to move social science-based scholarship on pop music into more contemporary territories dominated by globalised, networked relations. I've also worked on topics in the sociology of museums and visual culture, the sociology of cities and media/popular culture. I have a particular interest in the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and critical conceptual accounts of the hypermodern. I am currently co-editing a collection with Kate Orton-Johnson called Rethinking Sociology in the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan) which will assess the methodological and conceptual challenges faced by the discipline as it confronts digitalised social landscapes. I am on the Advisory Board of the journal Cultural Sociology, I have been academic consultant for the media company TernTV and I am a member of the ESRC Peer Review College.

I'm also an active musician with experience of remixing, writing scores for films, documentaries and theatre. I collaborate with other musicians, most recently as K Projekt, an Anglo-Swedish post-punk band (http://soundcloud.com/k-projekt/sets/k-projekt) and Funkspiel, an electro-pop band (http://www.myspace.com/funkspiel).
 

Current PhD Students

• Orlando Villalobos Guevara: Independent Games Production
  

• Kirsti McGregor: Gender and Web 2.0
  

• Evangelos Chrysagis: An Ethnography of the Glasgow DIY Music Scene
  

• Paul Harkins: Sampling and Popular Music

• Fiona Myers: Sociology and Aesthetics: The Case of Portraiture

• Chi-Chung Wang: Technology, Know-How and Rock Music: The Case of Taiwan

• Marios Kampouris: Technological Innovation and the Field of Renewable Energy
• Ben Twist: Performing Arts and Environmental Change
• Harriet Kennedy: Bandes Dessinees in Quebec
  

Completed

Sam Friedman: Comedy and Distinction (2011); Mary Fogarty: Competing Tastes in International B-Boy/B-Girl Culture (2011); Sarah Hill: Politics and Performance (2010); Alima Bucciantini: Objects, Aura and Museums (2009); Keith Fleming: Foucault and the Avant-Garde (2005); Suzanne Schulz: The Fashion Industry (2004).

Recent Publications

'Musiques Populaires en Regime Numerique: Acteurs, Equipements, Styles et Pratiques', vol. 27. Reseaux, 2012: 1-22.

'Speed, Rhythm and Time-space: Museums and Cities', Space and Culture, 14.3, 2011: 197-213.

'Critique and Renewal in the Sociology of Music: Bourdieu and Beyond', Cultural Sociology, 5:1, 2011: 121-138.

'The Rise of the New Amateurs: Popular Music, Digital Technology and the Fate of Cultural Production', in Handbook of Cultural Sociology, John R. Hall, Laura Grindstaff and Ming-cheng Lo (eds), Routledge, 2010.

'Software Sequencers and Cyborg Singers: Popular Music in the Digital Hypermodern', New Formations, 66, Spring 2009: 81-99.

'OK Computer: Mobility, Software and the Laptop Musician', Information, Communication and Society, 11:7, October 2008: 912-932.

'Putting a Glitch in the Field: Bourdieu, Actor Network Theory and Contemporary Music', Cultural Sociology, 2:3, 2008: 301-319.

'Pithy, Polemical and Paradoxical', review of Pierre Bourdieu's Political Interventions, Times Higher Education, 8-14 May, 2008: p.48.  

'Postmodern Restructurings' in Sharon Macdonald (ed.) A Companion to Museum Studies, Oxford, Blackwell, 2006.

'A Question of Perception: Bourdieu, Art and the Postmodern', British Journal of Sociology 2005, 56: 1: 123-139.

'Reconstructing a Sociology of the Arts', extended review, The Sociological Review, vol.2, no.4, November, 2004: 586-592.

'Having One's Tate and Eating it: Transformations of the Museum in a Hypermodern Era', in Andrew McLellan (ed.), Art and its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

'The Art of Space in the Space of Art: Edinburgh and its Gallery, 1780-1860', (pdf file) Museum and Society, July 2003, 1:2.

Museums and Modernity: Art Galleries and the Making of Modern Culture, Oxford and New York, Berg, 2002. Shortlisted for the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize, BSA.
 
'Urban Portraits: Space / Body / City in Late Georgian Edinburgh', New Formations, 47, Summer 2002: 194-215.

'Museums: Leisure Between State and Distinction', in Histories of Leisure, Rudy Koshar (ed), Berg: Oxford, 2002: 27-44.

'A Different Field of Vision: Gentlemen and Players in Edinburgh, 1826-1851', in Reading Bourdieu on Society and Culture, Bridget Fowler (ed), Oxford: Blackwell, 2000: 142-63.

Recent Conference and Seminar Papers (since 2005)

* Denotes invited talk

* 'Why 1983? Digitalization Goes Pop', Pecha Kucha, Glasgow School of Art, June 2011.

* 'Modernité du numérique?', Plenary Lecture, Artistic Work and Creativity in the Digital Era, University of Avignon and the Vaucluse, May 2011.

* 'The Success of Failure: Reflections on Mistakes, Accidents and Errors in Music', University of Exeter, SocArts Symposium, May 2011. 

'Unbinding Cybermedia: The Case of Lost', with Kate Orton-Johnson, BSA Annual Conference, London School of Economics, April 2011.

'Thinking Music Sociology After Bourdieu', European Sociological Association, Arts Research Network, University of Surrey, August 2010.

* 'Laptops in Popular Music', ANR Seminar, Les Artistes et Regimes Numerique, L'Institut Sciences Sociale et du Travail, Paris, June 2010.

* 'Digital Formations in Music: People, Devices, Styles and Practices', From Helmholtz to Hard Drives: Music’s Material Legacy and Digital Future, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, May 2010.

'Snap, Crackle and Pop: Re-writing Popular Music Studies Through Contingency', Musicology in the Third Millennium, Sibelius Academy, Seinajoki, Finland, March, 2010.

'On Error, Accident and Contingency in Popular Music', IASPM, University of Liverpool, July 2009.

* 'After Bourdieu: Critique and Renewal in the Sociology of Culture', Sociology Seminar Series, University of Edinburgh, April 2009.

'After Bourdieu: Current Dilemmas in the Sociology of Music', 25 Ans de Sociologie de la Musique en France, University of Paris, Sorbonne, November 2008.

'Band in a Box: Music Production, Technology and the Digital', Popular Music Studies: Problems, Disputes, Questions, IASPM, University of Glasgow, September 2008.

* 'À La Recherche du Texte Perdu: Lost in Hypermedia', Culture, Interaction and Knowledge: Sociology at York – Past, Present and Future, University of York, July 2008.

* 'Human After All? Music and Machines', University of Aberdeen Sociology Seminar Series, April 2007.

'The Socio-technical Biography of a Musical Instrument: The Case of the Roland TB-303', BSA Annual Conference, University of East London, April 2007.

'Digital Music Production in the Hypermodern', European Sociological Association Annual Conference, University of Glasgow, September 2007.

* 'Reflections on a Paper: Five Hits, Two Misses and a Conclusion', ESRC Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Seminar, Open University, July 2007.

'OK Computer: Mobility, Software and the Laptop Musician', The Art of Record Production, University of Edinburgh, September 2006.

* 'Digitizing Bourdieu: Music, Technology, Production', Aesthetics, Culture and Society, IASH, University of Edinburgh, March 2006.
   
* 'Museums and Cities: Towards a Rhythmanalysis', University of York Sociology Seminar Series, May 2005.

* '’Boxes of Speed’? Museums and Cities', University of Lancaster Sociology Seminar Series, March 2005.
 

 

PhD in Sociology