Professor Richard Tutton

Profile

Biography

The first person in my family to go to university, I grew up on what used to be called a council estate. At age 16, rather than find work in the local factory which my dad thought would be a smart move, I went to Further Education College and found myself studying A level Sociology, Economics and English Literature. Everything changed after that. I applied to the University of Essex to do an undergraduate degree in English and European Literature; there I was lucky to be taught by some amazing people who inspired me to pursue an academic career.

After that, I successfully gained an ESRC PhD studentship to undertake doctoral research in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University. I then took up a post-doc post in SATSU (Science and Technology Studies Unit) at University of York. When this research finished, I moved to the Institute for Science and Society (ISS) at the University of Nottingham (2004-2007).

In September 2007, I joined Cesagen (Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics) which formed part of the ESRC Genomics Network at Lancaster University. I remained at Cesagen until its closure at the end of 2012 when I joined the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University. While there, I served as the co-Director of the Centre for Science Studies (2016-2018) and co-chaired the 20th biennial European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) conference in July 2018. 

In October 2018, I moved to the University of York. Currently, I am the co-Director of the SATSU (since 2021), and have served in various department roles including as Director of Learning and Teaching (2019-2023) and as a Faculty of Social Sciences Learning and Teaching Lead (2022-23). In 2023, I became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. 

I am an elected member of the EASST Council (serving my second term) and coordinating editor of the in-house journal EASST Review. From 2013-2024, I was Editor-in-Chief of the Taylor Francis journal New Genetics and Society. 

Departmental roles

SATSU Co-Director 

Research

Overview

My research interests are in Science and Technology Studies (STS), with a specific focus on the social studies of outer space and sociology of futures. 

Sociology of Futures

I am interested in what sociology offers to analyse how futures are imagined and contested in contemporary societies and how they shape different forms of social action. Correspondingly, I have also written about how sociologists themselves have understood futures and situated them in their accounts of the discipline.

I was a co-investigator on the ESRC funded ‘Austerity Futures’ project (2012-2014), a key output from which was a special issue that I co-edited with Professor Rebecca Coleman (U of Bristol) for The Sociological Review called ‘Futures in Question’ (2017).

In the last few years, I have been thinking about futurelessness and its relationship with sociological debates about the relationship between imagined futures, power and social change. I am interested in exploring the extent to which ‘futurelessness’ is a particular mode of relating to and feeling about the future, characteristic of contemporary European societies, and its political and social consequences.

Lastly, I am also collaborating with Professor Hannah Morgan (U of Leeds) on developing the relationship between sociology of futures and disability studies, partly through the concept of ‘dis-futurism’. 

STS and social studies of outer space

My interest in how social groups imagine futures also extends to how wealthy entrepreneurs have been investing in improving human spaceflight capabilities through the development of reusable rockets to greatly reduce the cost of orbital launches. This includes Elon Musk at Space X and Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin whose techno-utopian visions of the future involve ‘extraplanetary imaginaries’ that draw together technological progress, libertarian desires of human freedom, and a sense of salvation from existential risks.

More recently, I have worked with Dr Eleanor Armstrong (Leicester U) on analysing how the UK Government has sought to re-establish British space launch capabilities by supporting the development of several spaceports across the UK. In part, my interest here is in seeing how expectations of the future in terms of economic and political benefit are shaping policy making in this area.

In 2018, I helped to found the Social Studies of Outer Space network, which is an international group of scholars working across multiple disciplines. At the University of York, I have also led efforts to set up the Outer Space Research Network, which includes colleagues from the Law School, Physics Engineering and Technology, Computer Science and Sociology. 

Supervision

I am an experienced doctoral supervisor and examiner and would welcome new students with an interest in sociology of futures or the social studies of outer space. 

Publications

Full publications list

Monographs

Tutton, R. (2014) Genomics and the Reimagining of Personalized Medicine (Ashgate: London and Burlington)

Edited books

Tutton, R and O. Corrigan (eds) (2004) Genetic Databases: Socio-Ethical Issues in the Collection and Use of DNA (London: Routledge) [104]

Selected Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Morgan, H and R Tutton (2024) ‘Enabling futures? Disability and sociology of futures’, Journal of Sociology, 61(1), 159-175.

Yap, Xiao-Shan;, M Janssen, T Aganaba, R Tutton, K Korpershoek, G Profitiliotis, F Rabitz, M Shiny Subbiah, L Wagenknecht (2023) ‘Four alternative scenarios of commons in space: prospects and challenges’, International Journal of the Commons, 17 (1): 390-410.

Tutton, R. (2023) ‘The sociology of futurelessness’, Sociology 57 (2): 438-453 

Tutton, R. (2020) Sociotechnical Imaginaries as Techno-Optimism: Examining Outer Space Utopias of Silicon Valley', Science as Culture, 30(3): 416-439

Tutton, R. (2018) ‘Multiplanetary Imaginaries and Utopia: The Case of Mars One’, Science, Technology and Human Values 43 (3): 518-539

Furbo, M. and R. Tutton (2017) ‘Spitting Images: Remaking Saliva a Promissory Substance’, New Genetics and Society 36 (2): 36 (2): 159-185

Weiner, K.; P. Martin, M. Richards and R. Tutton (2017) ‘Have We Seen the Geneticization of Society? Expectations and Evidence’, Sociology of Health and Illness 39 (7): 989-1004

Smart, A; D. Bolnick and R. Tutton (2017) ‘Health and Genetic Ancestry Testing: Time to Bridge the Gap’, BMC Medical Genomics 10(1): 1-9

Tutton, R. (2017) ‘Wicked Futures: Meaning, Matter and the Sociology of the Future’, The Sociological Review 65 (3): 478-492

McNeil, M.; M. Arribas-Ayllon, J Haran, A Mackenzie and R. Tutton (2017) ‘Conceptualising Imaginaries of Science, Technology and Society’ in U. Felt, R. Fouché, C. A. Miller, L. Smith-Doerr (eds), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (MIT Press: Cambridge)

Tutton, R (2014) ‘Pharmacogenomic Biomarkers in Drug Labels: What do they tell us? Pharmacogenomics 15 (3): 1462-2416

Tutton, R.; C Hauskeller and S Sturdy (2014) ‘Suspect Technologies: Forensic Testing of Asylum Seekers at the UK Border’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (5): 738-752

Tutton, R. (2012) ‘Personalizing Medicine: Futures Present and Past’, Social Science and Medicine 75 (10): 1721-1728. 

Tutton, R. (2011) ‘Promising Pessimism: Reading the Futures to be Avoided in Biotech’, Social Studies of Science, 41: 411-429 

Raman, S and R. Tutton (2010) ‘Life, Science and Biopower’, Science, Technology and Human Values 35 (5): 711-734 

Selected Book Chapters

Goodwin, D and R Tutton (2021) 'Inquiries: healthcare futures', in The Routledge Handbook of Social Futures, Lopez Galviz, C. & Spiers, E. (eds), Routledge: London, 169-179

Roberts. C and R. Tutton (2018) ‘Health Activism, Biosociality and Social Class‘ in J. Johnson, M. Levina (eds) Biocitizenship (New York University Press: New York)

Tutton, R. (2015) ‘Personal Genomics and its Sociotechnical Transformations’ in R. Chadwick and D. Kumar (eds) Genomics and Society (Academic Press: London)

Tutton, R.; C Hauskeller and S Sturdy (2015) ‘Importing Forensic Bio-Medicine into Asylum Adjudication: Genetic Ancestry and Isotope Testing in the U.K.’ in B. N. Lawrence and G. Ruffer (eds) Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony

Teaching

Undergraduate

I currently lead two undergraduate modules called ‘Creating Sociological Alternatives’ and ‘Investigating Social Problems’.