David Oswell, BA (Hons), MA , PhD

Cultural studies, media and communication studies, sociology of science and technology, sociology of childhood and social theory

BA (Hons) Classics and Philosophy (Polytechnic of North London), MA in Film and Television Studies (Polytechnic of Central London), PhD in Sociology (Open University).

I started off teaching part-time at the Polytechnic of North London while I was completing my MA in Film and Television Studies at the Polytechnic of Central London and just starting researching for my PhD based at the Open University. I then got my first full-time lecturing post in media and cultural studies at Staffordshire University in 1993. I finally completed my PhD and moved down to the Department of Sociology at Brunel University in 1995. At Brunel I got my first taste of science and technology studies from Steve Woolgar, Mike Lynch and Alan Irwin and had to proffer the pretence of knowing the field as Director of Graduate Studies at the Centre for Research into Innovation, Culture and Technology (CRICT). I then moved to the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths College in 2001. Since being at Goldsmiths my research has developed around cultural theory, technology, organisation, and social life – for which the ‘child' is still a central, if somewhat oblique, figure.

Teaching

My undergraduate teaching is in the fields of cultural studies, cultural theory and the sociology of childhood. I teach the following courses: SO52079A – Culture in Context, SO52040A – Culture, Representation and Difference and SO53043A – Childhood Matters.

My postgraduate teaching reflects some of these interests but is also inflected by more general philosophical questions about generation, forms of life and technology (from Aristotle to La Mettrie to Serres, Deleuze and Latour). I teach a course entitled SO71073A - Forms of Techno-Social Life.

Areas of supervision

I supervise PhD students across the range of my research interests and I currently supervise students working on areas including: the cultural analysis of mobile telephone use; child protection and professional visual imagination; the government of teenage pregnancy in postwar Britain; a social history of organology in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; and cultural memory, ‘race', and migration.

Some PhD students supervised to completion

• Maria Sourbati, ‘Regulating convergence: communication policies and the digital television markets', Awarded PhD in 2001
• Lin Williams, ‘A Discursive Analysis of Psychiatric Encounters', Awarded PhD in 2002
• Bryony Hoskins, ‘Tales of the intimate: exploring young people's accounts of sexual practice', Awarded PhD in 2002

Selected publications