• University of Edinburgh
• 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)
  

Principal interests and Current Projects

My current interests are in the sociology of music, particularly the interrelationships between digital technology and popular music production. 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 practices, mediations and forms. I've also worked on topics in the sociology of museums and visual culture, the sociology of cities and 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'm also an active musician with experience of remixing, writing scores for films, documentaries and theatre. I play in a local electro-pop band (http://www.myspace.com/funkspiel) and can often be found gigging in the city.
 

PhD Supervision

I would welcome proposals from research students with interests in the above areas, but I have experience of supervising PhDs across a range of topics. Current PhD students and their topics:

• Orlando Villalbos: Video Games as a Cultural Industry
  

• Kirsti McGregor: Gender and Web 2.0
  

• Sam Friedman: Comedy, Consumption and the Edinburgh Festival 
  

• Jack Burton: Media, Advertising and Fatherhood

• Sarah Hill: Politics as Performance

• Evangelos Chrysagis: An Ethnography of Popular Music Practices

• Paul Harkins: Sampling and Popular Music

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

• Mary Fogarty: Musical Tastes and Dance Practices
  

Recent Publications

"Speed, Rhythm and Time-space: Museums and Cities", Space and Culture, forthcoming, 2010.

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

'The Slug and the Juggernaut? Museums, Cities, Rhythms', Edinburgh Working Papers in Sociology, no. 38, 2009: 37pp.

'Software Sequencers and Cyborg Singers: Popular Music in the Digital Hypermodern', New Formations, 66, Spring 2009: pp81-99.

'OK Computer: Mobility, Software and the Laptop Musician', Information, Communication and Society, 11: 7, October 2008: pp912-932.

'Putting a Glitch in the Field: Bourdieu, Actor Network Theory and Contemporary Music', Cultural Sociology, 2: 3, 2008: pp301-319.

'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, (publisher's note). Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.

'A Question of Perception: Bourdieu, Art and the Postmodern', British Journal of Sociology 2005, Volume 56, issue 1: pp123-139.

'Reconstructing a Sociology of the Arts', extended review, The Sociological Review, vol.2, no.4, November, 2004: pp586-592.

'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, Blackwell: Oxford, 2003, (publisher's note).
 
Museums and Modernity: Art Galleries and the Making of Modern Culture, (publisher's note). 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: pp194-215.

'The Art of Space in the Space of Art: Edinburgh and its Gallery, 1780-1860', (pdf file) Museum and Society, July 2003, vol.1, no.: 2.

Recent Conference and Seminar Papers (since 2005)

* denotes invited talk

'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.