Convenors
Laura Harris
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Dr Laura Harris is an Anniversary Fellow at the University of Southampton. Her research looks at the overlap of visual sociology and creative art practices, specifically artists moving image, and she has collaborated with several galleries. She is book reviews editor at Cultural Sociology, and also works as an arts writer.
Jiayi Tian
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Jiayi Tian is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. His interests cover the identities and careers of outsider and self-taught artists, globalised art production, the moral discourse of artists in modern China, and contemporary Chinese art. His PhD project focuses on the commercial painters’ exploration of an artist self in post-socialist China.
Linzhi Zhang
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Dr Linzhi Zhang is an affiliate lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Her research adopts a cultural approach to labour studies with a focus on creativity and work in contemporary China. She is currently working on her book stemming from her British Academy-funded project, Artists as Labouring Bodies in a Productivism China.
Steering Group
- Dr Lisa McCormick is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, and a conservatory-trained cellist. Her 2015 book, Performing Civility, was the first study to analyse the social aspects of international classical music competitions. She has recently edited the collection The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music: New Directions and New Discoveries for Palgrave, which presents new research agendas and theoretical developments in the field.
- Dr Maria Rovisco is Associate Professor in Sociology at the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, and the Lead for the Research Area on Arts at the Bauman Institute. She is a cultural sociologist with interests in cosmopolitanism, the role of artists in civil society, social movements, and visual culture. She is currently researching how artists go about articulating and realising their visions of socio-ecological futures in the UK and Argentina. She has recently co-edited Visual Politics in the Global South (Palgrave, 2023), and is currently writing a book on artists and the civic imagination.
- Prof Victoria D. Alexander is Professor of Sociology and Arts Management at Goldsmiths, University of London. Alexander is a leading voice in the sociology of art, having researched and published widely on topics including the funding of art museums, cultural policy in comparative perspective, and visual culture. Her books include Sociology of the Arts (2003; 2021), Museums and Money (1996), Art and the State (2005, co-authored), and the two-volume Art and the Challenge of Markets (2018, co-edited), alongside numerous articles. Her current research includes legitimation in aesthetic fields, cultural policy, and cultural values. .