Profile

Biography

• MA (Edinburgh)
• MSc (LSE)
• PhD  (Edinburgh)

I originally studied both Sociology and Politics (MA at Edinburgh), but always found myself drawn to the greater intellectual breadth offered by Sociology. I went on to complete my MSc at the London School of Economics and returned to Edinburgh to take up an ESRC-funded PhD looking at the relationship between social class and taste in the consumption of British comedy.

After a brief stint as a Teaching Fellow at Edinburgh, I joined York as a Research Fellow working in the Sociology of Culture in Spring 2012.      

I believe strongly in producing research that can be used by, and is of interest to, those working beyond academia. Thus far, my research on comedy taste has attracted interest from the national and international media, including The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed and abroad from The Age newspaper in Australia and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Outside academia, I am also the publisher of Fest (www.festmag.co.uk), an arts magazine that runs during the Edinburgh Festivals. The magazine is a reviews guide which covers every inch of the world’s largest arts Festival. Now in its eleventh year, Fest has a circulation of over 150,000. I have also written freelance for a number of other journalistic publications, including The Guardian, The Sunday Herald and The Big Issue.

Research

Overview

• Popular Culture
• Cultural Consumption
• Social Mobility
• Comedy and humour

My current research examines how social mobility (both upward and downward) affects people’s cultural tastes and wider cultural identities. Mobility is seen as a primary indicator of a fair and just society; a society where no individual is prevented from fulfilling their potential. However, while economic and policy perspectives on mobility tend to present it is an unequivocally progressive force, very little research has examined the impact of mobility on individuals themselves. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how mobility may facilitate new relationships, new tastes and increased social status, but also how it may dislocate people from their cultural roots, adversely affecting their relationships with family and friends, and producing an identity not entirely comfortable in one’s current or original cultural habitat.

Current projects

YECCE Profile

Sam has a long-standing interest in the sociological study of cultural taste and social stratification. His recent work has looked at the relationship between class and taste in the consumption of British comedy. Although traditionally considered 'lowbrow', comedy has become increasingly popular among the middle classes since the 'Alternative Comedy Movement' of the late 1970s. Using a broadly Bourdieusian framework, and based on a survey of 1,000 respondents and 24 in depth interviews, his research explored whether those with high cultural capital seek to rarefy their comic taste by consuming more ‘legitimate’ comedy and employing styles of appreciation inaccessible to those with less cultural capital. At York he is currently working on a new project, which aims to examine how social mobility (both upward and downward) affects people’s cultural tastes and wider cultural identities.  

Publications

Selected publications

 (Forthcoming) '''There's something fundamental about what makes you laugh': Comedy Taste and Symbolic Boundaries", Cultural Sociology, (Special edition on boundary-drawing and socio-cultural inequality), 6 (2)  

Forthcoming) "‘Handling’ the Darkness: Chris Morris as Cultural Capital" in J.Leggott and J.Sexton (eds) The Comedy of Chris Morris, Palgrave Macmillan: London 

(2011) "The Cultural Currency of a 'Good' Sense of Humour: British Comedy and New Forms of Distinction" British Journal of Sociology, 62 (2)

(2011) 'Foregrounding The Comedy Audience', Participations: International Journal of Audience Research, 8 (2)(2010) "Dutch Courage: The Surreal World of Hans Teeuwen", Comedy Studies, 1(2)

(2010) "The Year of The Anti-Comedian", Comedy Studies, 1(1)

(2009) "Legitimating A Discredited Art Form: The Changing Field of British Comedy”, Edinburgh Working Papers in Sociology, No. 39, ISBN: 1-900522-73--X