Profile

Biography

• MA, PhD (York)
• BSc (Bradford)

David was born in Derby in 1977. He studied for a BSc in Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Bradford between 1995 and 1998.

In 2001 he returned to university and studied for an MA in the Sociology of Contemporary Culture at York. He then stayed on at York to complete his PhD on the digitalisation of music culture between 2002 and 2006.

After a year working as ESRC 'translational' Research Fellow on the e-Society programme based at York he took up a post as Senior Lecturer and Head of Programme for Communication at York St John University.

In the Autumn of  2008 he returned to the University of York as Lecturer in Sociology. In October 2011 he was promoted to Senior Lecturer. He teaches predominantly in the areas of the sociology of culture, popular culture, contemporary sociology and social theory.

Research

Overview

David's general interests are in the areas of

• Popular culture, particularly popular music culture
• Digital technologies, new media and web cultures
• Noise and sound, particularly in the urban context
• Social and cultural theory

He is currently using popular culture to explore the possibilities for expanding the methodological, conceptual and communicative repertoire of sociology. More specifically at the moment he is exploring the potential of new forms of digital by-product data for social research

Publications

Selected publications

• Beer, D. & Burrows, R. (2013) ‘Popular culture, digital archives and the new social life of data’, Theory, Culture & Society, forthcoming.
• Beer, D. (2012) ‘Hip-hop as urban and regional research: encountering an insider’s ethnography of city life’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, forthcoming.
• Beer, D. (2012) ‘The comfort of mobile media: uncovering personal attachments with everyday devices’, Convergence, forthcoming.
• Beer, D. (2012) ‘Using social media data aggregators to do social research’, Sociological Research Online 17(2): forthcoming.
• Burrows, R. & Beer, D. (2012) ‘Rethinking Space: Urban informatics and the sociological imagination’, in, Prior, N. & Orton-Johnson, K. (eds) Rethinking Sociology in the Digital Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Forthcoming.
  
• Penfold-Mounce, R., Beer, D. & Burrows, R. (2011) ‘The Wire as social science fiction’, Sociology 45(1): 152-167.
• Atkinson, R. & Beer, D. (2010) ‘The Ivorine Tower in the City: Engaging Urban Studies After The Wire’, City 14(5): 529-544.
• Allen-Robertson, J. & Beer, D. (2010) ‘Mobile ideas: tracking a concept through time and space’, Mobilities 5(4): 529-545.
• Beer, D. & Penfold-Mounce, R. (2010) ‘Researching glossy topics: the case of the academic study of celebrity’, Celebrity Studies 1(3): 361-366.
• Beer, D. (2010) ‘Mobile music, coded objects and everyday spaces’, Mobilities 5(4): 469-484.
  
• Beer, D. & Burrows, R. (2010) ‘The sociological imagination as popular culture’, in, Burnett, J., Jeffers, S. & Thomas, G. (eds) New Social Connections: Sociology’s Subjects and Objects. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 233-252.
• Beer, D. & Burrows, R. (eds) (2010) ‘Consumption, prosumption and participatory web cultures’, a special issue of the Journal of Consumer Culture 10(1): 3-149.
• Beer, D. (2009) ‘Can you dig it? Some reflections on the sociological problems associated with being uncool’, Sociology 43(6): 1151-1162
• Beer, D. (2009) ‘Power through the algorithm? Participatory Web cultures and the technological unconscious’, New Media & Society 11(6): 985-1002.
• Beer, D. & Penfold-Mounce, R. (2009) ‘Celebrity gossip and the new melodramatic imagination’, Sociological Research Online 14(2/3).
• Gane, N. & Beer, D. (2008) New Media: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg.
• Beer, D. (2008) ‘Researching a confessional society’, International Journal of Market Research (50 th anniversary special issue on Web 2.0 and Social Networks) 50(5): 619-629.
• Beer, D. (2008) ‘Making friends with Jarvis Cocker: Music culture in the context of Web 2.0’, Cultural Sociology 2(2): 222-241.
• Beer, D. (2008) ‘The iConic iNterface and the Veneer of Simplicity: MP3 Players and the Reconfiguration of Music Collecting and Reproduction Practices in the Digital Age’, Information, Communication & Society 11(1): 71-88.
• Beer, D. (2008) ‘Social network(ing) sites…revisiting the story so far: a response to danah boyd and Nicole Ellison’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(2): 516-529.
• Beer, D. & Burrows, R. (2007) ‘Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some initial considerations’, Sociological Research Online 12(5).
• Beer, D. (2007) ‘Tune out: Music, soundscapes and the urban mise-en-scène’, Information, Communication & Society (special issue on Urban Informatics) 10(6): 846-866.
• Beer, D. (2007) ‘Thoughtful Territories: Imagining the Thinking Power of Things and Spaces’, City 11(2): 229-238.
• Beer, D. (2006) ‘The Pop-Pickers have Picked Decentralised Media: The fall of Top of the Pops and the rise of the second media age’, Sociological Research Online 11(3).