Dr Kath Bassett
Lecturer

Profile

Biography

Kath is a Lecturer in Sociology / Social Media whose work examines how digital technologies intervene in and govern mobilities, urban economies, and touristic development. 

Growing up on the west coast of the United States amid globalisation, economic liberalisation, and rapid digital development and experimentation, Kath came to sociology as a way of making sense of how these transformations were shaping both the world around them and their own sense of self. Sociology offered not only a language for understanding change but also a means of playing with and pushing back against it. While studying sociology as an undergraduate, Kath worked as a research assistant on a project examining therapeutic relationships in gender-affirming care. This early experience deepened their interest in the subtle, often mundane forms of mediation and normative power that make particular ways of becoming possible, but also close down and render others less so – a thread that continues to guide their research.

During their masters programme at York, Kath encountered digital sociology for the first time and began drawing parallels between the workings of power in therapeutic contexts and those unfolding through digital platforms and algorithms. These observations took on new life with the rise of locative media, and particularly when Pokémon Go was first released and disrupted everyday spatial norms, revealing the capacity of the digital to shape the “real world.” It was in this moment that Kath became intrigued by how gamification and algorithmic systems choreograph movement and shape urban experience – ideas that later underpinned their PhD research at the University of Edinburgh. Their doctoral work examined how locative media platforms govern tourism and cultural economies, shaping what becomes visible and discoverable, how hospitality work is reflected on and conducted, and how social life in cities is organised.

Kath’s time at the University of Edinburgh, particularly within the Edinburgh Futures Institute, was deeply formative in shaping their sociological orientation. As a Postdoctoral Researcher within the Institute’s Data Civics Observatory, they worked on interdisciplinary projects that explored how digital infrastructures and participatory methods could be mobilised to support more inclusive forms of urban life. The first, CovidArcadia, examined how local businesses and cultural organisations across Edinburgh responded to the challenges of the pandemic, tracing how digital technologies were used to sustain connection, adapt business models, and reimagine community life. The second, the ESRC-funded Granton Waterfront Development project, investigated how data-driven approaches could enable more inclusive and participatory forms of urban regeneration in North Edinburgh. Together, these experiences affirmed Kath’s commitment to a sociology that is publicly engaged, methodologically experimental, and locally anchored – one that seeks to remain relevant and responsible to the communities and places it studies.

They returned to the University of York and joined the Department of Sociology as a member of staff in 2022. Kath now leads and teaches on the MA/MSc Social Media programmes and contributes to the BA in Digital Media, Culture and Communication. Their teaching is guided by a commitment to locally grounded sociology – connecting global digital processes to the diverse places students inhabit and study from – and extends into public scholarship through the co-produced Sociologically Imagining York podcasted walk. They are also developing scholarship on walking as pedagogy, exploring how movement and place can animate sociological learning and connect theory to lived experience.

Kath’s current research furthers their historical approach to digital culture, examining how 1980s travel agents interacted with and navigated the algorithmic biases of early Computer Reservation Systems (CRS). This work develops their interest in the infrastructural and gendered histories of algorithmic systems, revealing that the challenges of our algorithmic present have deeper roots within this decade. Alongside this, Kath is expanding their research into how artificial intelligence shapes urban imaginaries and experiences, and how digital infrastructures continue to reconfigure cultural and economic life.

Education & Certifications

• Fellow (FHEA), Advanced HE via University of York
• PhD in Sociology, University of Edinburgh
• Certificate in Digital Methods, Universiteit van Amsterdam
• MA in Social Research, University of York
• BA in Sociology and Gender & Sexuality Studies, Pacific University

Departmental roles

• Academic Lead for Research & Scholarship Visibility
• Programme Lead for the MA/MSc Social Media programmes
• Mobilisation Facilitator for the Departmental Decolonising Collective
• Co-Developer & Producer of ‘Sociologically Imagining York’ 
• Member of the Departmental Ethics Committee

Other roles

• Member of the Social Science Faculty Futures working group
• Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Cultural Economy

Research

Overview

Kath’s research explores how digital technologies shape mobility, urban life, and cultural economic organisation, with particular attention to the affective and infrastructural dimensions of platform power. Their work combines ethnographic, historical, and digital methods to trace how algorithmic systems materialise within cities, workplaces, and everyday practices of movement and travel.

Research interests include:

• Mobilities, Cities, and Tourism
• Cultural Scenes, Markets and Economies
• Mobile Devices, Social Media, and Locative Platforms
• Algorithmic Governance, Affects, and Inequalities
• Classical and Contemporary Social Theory – including Foucauldian, Actor-Network, Marxist Feminist, and Racial Capitalism perspectives
• Qualitative and Creative Methodologies – including ethnographic, historical, walking, and digital methods

Supervision

Kath welcomes PhD applications that explore how digital technologies, cultural practices, and economic life intersect. They are particularly interested in projects that engage with:

• tourism, mobility, and urban transformation
• digital and urban work, labour, and economies
• the social, cultural, and spatial dynamics of platforms and algorithmic systems
• gender, race, power, and inequality in digital and urban settings
• qualitative, ethnographic, historical, and creative approaches to studying digital and urban life;
• Critical, feminist, and decolonial perspectives on technology and society

Kath currently co-supervises three doctoral projects:

• Sishaung Fu - an ethnographic study of Chengdu’s emerging coffee culture and its relationship to urban development and digital media;
• Kit Towner - a digital ethnographic study examining the platformisation of the gender-critical movement and the affective economies of online conflict; and
• Mia Westrap - an analysis of the intuitive eating movement on Instagram, exploring digital body politics and postfeminist sensibilities.

Publications

Selected publications

GALANOS, V., BASSETT, K., MCGOWAN, A., MCFALL, L., HENDERSON, J., and ESCOBAR, O. (2025) ‘We don’t do digital, we dig it all: Experimenting with ‘Data Civics’ methods to support urban development in Granton, Edinburgh’ in Garcia- Hernandez, M and Gravari-Barbas, M. (eds.) Cultural Heritage on the Urban Peripheries: Towards New Research Paradigms. Milton Park: Routledge, pp. 221-238. doi.org/10.4324/9781003477884-16

BASSETT, K., DOYURAN, E.B., MCFALL, L., and MCGOWAN, A. (2024) ‘#CovidArcadia: The Pandemic Conditions of Emergence of Digital-Affective Atmospheres’ in Trompette, P. (ed.) Market Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 256-279. doi: 10.1017/9781009413961.021 

BASSETT, K. (2024) ‘TripAdvisor as a Geo-Pastoral Technology’. Tourism Geographies, 26(4), 672-686. doi: 10.1080/14616688.2023.2275734.

BASSETT, K. (2023) ‘The Development of Edinburgh’s Harry Potter Tourism Scene and TripAdvisor as an Ordering Resource’. Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture, 8(1).

STEWART, E.A., NONHEBEL, A., MOLLER, C. and BASSETT, K. (2022) ‘Doing our bit: solidarity, inequality, and COVID-19 crowdfunding for the UK National Health Service’. Social Science & Medicine, 308(1): 1-9. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115214.

BASSETT, K. (2018) ‘Metagaming: Playing, competing, spectating, cheating, trading, making and breaking videogames’. New Media and Society, 20(6): 2226-2228. doi:10.1177/1461444818764422a.

WHITEHEAD, J.C., BASSETT, K., FRANCHINI, L. and IACOLUCCI, M. (2015) ‘The Proof is in the Pudding: How Mental Health Practitioners View the Power of ‘Sex Hormones’ in the Process of Transition’. Feminist Studies, 41(3): 623-650. doi:10.1353/fem.2015.0043.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• SOC00017C - Living in Digital Cultures
• SOC00073I - Questioning Digital Cultures
• SOC00074I - Digital Media, Power & Social Change
• SOC00024M - AI in Society

Postgraduate

• SOC00003M - Understanding Social Media
• SOC00011M - Advanced Methods in Social Research
• SOC00009M - PGT Dissertation