Dr Alex Rhys-Taylor BSc, MA, PhD, PGCert

Alex Rhys-Taylor is a sociologist with a specialism in urban sociology and a particular focus on the relationship between our experiences of cities and histories of change. His work focusses on the multisensory experience of urban space the new forms of association and exclusion mediated through it. He is also engaged in research looking at the the role of cities in disrupting and transforming territories on a wider scale. Committed to the crafting of innovative methods and experimental approaches to urban
research, Alex also draws extensively on a long tradition of urban sociology.

Presentations and exhibitions

‘The Sensuous Materiality of Multiculture,’ COMPAS Conference on Migration and Ethnography, Oxford University, September 2011

‘Class, Power, Taste,’ Ethnographic Monograph Seminar Series, Gothenberg University May 2011

‘The Smell of Fear,’ Media and the Senses Conference, Goldsmiths, London

‘Coming to our Senses,’ Making The Intangible Tangible (Conference) Manchester City Museum, Manchester University, March 2010

‘Coming to our Senses,’ (Public Lecture), Gothenburg City Museum, March 2010

‘The Global Circulation of Taste and Distaste,’ NYLON Institute for Public Knowledge, NYU, New York, March 2010

‘Slime and Reason,’ Mapping Dangerous Spaces, The British Library, April 2009

‘Seafood and Stratification,’ Vital Signs, Manchester University, September 2008

‘Follow Your Nose,’ Mise-en-scène (Photography Exhibition), June 2007

Selected publications

‘Vad som finns i ett våndas? (What is in a squirm?) in Ord & Bild Göteberg, 6:2011

‘Senses in the Modern City’ in David Howes (ed.) Histories of the Senses: Modernity, Oxford: Berg, 2012

‘Xenophobia, Europe’s Death Knell,’ Opendemocracy, with Les Back, May 2011, http://www.opendemocracy.net/les-back-alex-rhys-taylor/xenophobia-europe%E2%80%99s-death-knell

‘Slime and Reason: Decoding Taste and Distaste’ Sense and Society, Forthcoming

‘Coming to Our Senses’ in Learning the City: Exploring Experience, Politics and Ethnography in Halliday, P. Rooke, A. and Dobson, S. (Eds.) Palgrave, Forthcoming

‘The Irrepressibility of Mangifera’ Eurozine April 2007 http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-04-23-rhystaylor-en.html