Raphaël Nowak
Lecturer

Profile

Biography

• PhD (Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia)
• MA (University of Sciences and Technologies, Lille, France)
• BSc (University of Sciences and Technologies, Lille, France)

Before joining the University of York in June 2021, I held a teaching fellow position at the University of Bristol (Bristol, UK; 2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship at Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia; 2017-2020), and a teaching and research fellow position at Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris, France; 2020-2021).

My research is in digital, cultural, and music sociology. I welcome PhD proposals that are located in those areas.

Departmental roles

In the Sociology department, I am the Director of Postgraduate Taught Studies since September 2023, and the programme lead for the MA Social Research since September 2025. 

Research

Overview

I am a cultural sociologist. Since the late 2000s, I have conducted research on music consumption and music taste, the materiality of digital objects, popular music heritage, and cultural transformations as mediated by digital technologies. 

As of 2025, I am the author, co-author, and co-editor of 7 books. 

I have published in the journals Cultural Sociology, The European Journal of Cultural Studies, The Journal of Cultural Research, The British Journal of Sociology, Cultural Trends, Popular Communication, Leisure Sciences, and The International Journal of Heritage Studies.
I am currently conducting research on issues regarding cultural practices, taste, and everyday life.

I supervise PhD students who conduct research in the areas of culture, media, and sports. 

Publications

Selected publications

Selected publications

Below are my publications since 2021. For more details about my publications, see my Google Scholar profile.

Books
Glevarec, H. and Nowak, R. (2025). Les Goûts Musicaux des Français·es. Préférences, Valeurs d'Usage et Compétences, Le Bord de l'Eau.
Glevarec, H., Combes, C., Nowak, R. and Cibois, P. (2024). Sortir. Sociologie des Sorties Culturelles des Français, Le Bord de l'Eau.
Baker, S., Cantillon, Z. and Nowak, R. (2023). Popular Music Heritage, Cultural Justice and the Deindustrialising City, Cambridge University Press
Nowak, R. and Bennett, A. (2022). Music Sociology. Value, Technology, and Identity, London: Routledge.

Articles
Glevarec, H., Combes, C., Nowak, R. and Cibois, P. (2025). 'Les sorties culturelles des français·es : cartographie des pratiques, analyse des motivations', Terrains/Théories, 19.
Nichols, E., Pavlidis, A., and Nowak, R. (2024). ‘“It’s like lifting the power”: Powerlifting, digital gendered subjectivities, and the politics of multiplicity’, Leisure Sciences, 46(3), 254-73.
Whelan, A. and Nowak, R., (2023). Genre work: "How" vs "what" questions in the sociology of music culture. Sociological Review, 71(3), 491-507
Glevarec, H. and Nowak, R., (2022). Déclarer son goût musical. Codage et analyse d’une question ouverte sur les préférences des Français. SociologieS, 1-42
Glevarec, H. and Nowak, R., (2022). La compétence culturelle. Pour un modèle socio-culturelle de la catégorisation musicale. Terrains/Théories, 15, 1-38
Nichols, E., Pavlidis, A. & Nowak, R. (2021). “It’s like Lifting the Power”: Powerlifting, Digital Gendered Subjectivities, and the Politics of Multiplicity, Leisure Sciences, 1-20.
Haynes, J., & Nowak, R. (2021). We were never cool: Investigating knowledge production and discourses of cool in the sociology of music, The British Journal of Sociology, 72(2), 448-462.
Cantillon, Z., Baker, S., & Nowak, R. (2021). A cultural justice approach to popular music heritage in deindustrialising cities, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 27(1), 73-89.

Book chapters
Haynes, J. and Nowak, R. (2025). 'When is a music audience? The challenges of a sociological perspective of music audiences in the platform age' in The Intellect Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies, Intellect.
Whelan, A. and Nowak, R. (2024). 'The ebbs and flows of online music genres' in The Oxford Handbook of World Popular Music, Oxford University Press.
Glevarec, H. and Nowak, R. (2023). 'Structure and historicity of youth music tastes: A brief overview of forty years of theoretical debates', in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Youth Culture, Bloomsbury.
Nowak, R. (2023). 'Youth, identity and everyday sound environments in the age of digital technologies', in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Youth Culture, Bloomsbury.
Nowak, R. (2022). 'Curating listening: The cultural production of a (commercial) experience', in Remaking Culture and Music Spaces: Affects, Infrastructures, Futures, Routledge.
Nowak, R. (2022). 'Mobile listening cultures', in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music, Space and Place, Bloomsbury.
Nowak, R. and Morgan, B. (2021). ‘New model, same old stories? Reproducing narratives of democratization in music streaming debates’, in Participatory Approaches to Music and Democracy, Chicago University Press.
Nowak, R. (2021). ‘The intricate relationship between music and the sharing economy’, in A Modern Guide to the Urban Sharing Economy, Edward Elgar Publishing.
Cantillon, Z., Baker, S., and Nowak, R. (2021). ‘Music heritage, cultural justice and the Steel City Archiving and curating popular music history in Wollongong, Australia’, in Music and Heritage: New Perspectives on Place-making and Sonic Identity, Taylor and Francis.

Teaching

Other teaching

In the Sociology Department, I teach in various modules at all levels (Y1, Y2, Y3, MA) in social theory, research methods, and cultural sociology.