Profile

Biography

 MSc, BA, DPhil (to be completed) (Oxford)

I studied a BA in PPE and an MSc in Sociology at Oxford, and am in the process of finishing my DPhil there too (under the supervision of Tak Wing Chan). In doing so, I'm lucky enough to have received funding from the ESRC (in the form of a 1+3 studentship), and from the British Academy and the British Sociological Association.I'm interested in issues surrounding the sociology of culture, particularly in how we can come up with interesting ways to test different claims about culture and cultural practices.

My DPhil focuses on whether reading for pleasure is a special case, and I use a range of longitudinal studies to try to find out. At York, I hope to make progress in making use of existing, non-survey data, so that I can get at issues that surveys aren't able to fully grasp.

Research

Overview

I'm interested in the sociology of culture, including (but not limited to)Cultural consumptionSocial stratificationSociology of musicGender and culture

I'm also interested in quantitative methods in sociology, particularly anything longitudinal.

Papers

My conference papers have included

• Reading behaviour across childhood and the life course”, Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Conference, Bielefeld, Germany, September 2011.
•  Extracurricular participation and the life course: adventures in cultural capital”, BSA Annual Conference (60th Anniversary), London School of Economics, UK, April 2011.
• Reading for pleasure: cultural capital or cognitive effect?”, Thirty Years after “Distinction”, Sciences-Po, Paris, France, November 2010.

The BSA paper generated a great deal of attention in the national and international media. I wrote an article for it for Books For Keeps, the UK's leading children's books magazines, which is available at http://bit.ly/qb1qK5

Teaching

Undergraduate

In the Spring Term, I'm lecturing in Social Research Methods and Class and Stratification, and I'm running seminars in Cultivating a Sociological Imagination.

Students interested in further issues arising from lectures should email me to arrange a meeting.