Professor David Beer

Profile

Biography

David is Professor of Sociology in the Department. After an undergraduate degree in Sociology with Social Psychology at the University of Bradford and a Masters degree in the sociology of contemporary culture, he completed his PhD in digital music cultures in 2006 and later took up a lecturer role in the Department of Sociology at York in 2008.

During his time in the department his teaching and research have focused mainly on the areas of culture, media and social theory. With broad interests in questions around power and imagination, much of his work in recent years has explored the role of data and algorithms in social life. Informed by these interests, he currently teaches on modules covering digital cultures, popular culture, digital methods, social theory and data.

In addition to his work in the department he is also currently the data cluster lead for the Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life.

Research

Overview

David's work explores how transformations in technology and media reshape culture and society. His work often focuses upon questions of power. Amongst other things, this has included work on the politics of data and metrics, the social power of algorithms, the tensions of AI and the dynamics of digital popular cultures and social media. His key publications on these topics include the books The Tensions of Algorithmic Thinking (2023), The Data Gaze (2019), Metric Power (2016) and Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation (2013). He is also co-author of New Media (2008, with Nick Gane) and Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory (2021, with Benjamin Jacobsen).

Alongside this, he also works on the history and future of social thought, with a particular focus on questions of imagination, creativity and inspiration. This work has included Georg Simmel’s Concluding Thoughts (2019), which explores the late works of Simmel, and the short book Punk Sociology (2014) as well as articles, chapters and reviews exploring the social imaginaries from a range of cultural forms and thinkers.

He is on the editorial boards of the journals Theory, Culture & Society; Information, Communication & Society; Cultural Sociology; Dialogues on Digital Society and Big Data & Society.

Publications

Selected publications

For details of David's publications please view his profile on the York Research Database.