David’s research is concerned with the social life of children, children’s rights and, more broadly, social theory.
David Oswell started off teaching part-time at the Polytechnic of North London while completing an MA in Film and Television Studies at the Polytechnic of Central London and researching for his PhD based at the Open University. David then got a first full-time lecturing post in media and cultural studies at Staffordshire University in 1993. He finally completed a PhD and moved down to the Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University in 1995. At Brunel, David got the 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). David then moved to the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths College in 2001.
In his early years at Goldsmiths, David's research and teaching developed around cultural theory, technology, organisation, and social life. But in recent years his writing has been firmly based around a set of questions and issues concerning the social life of children and childhood, children’s rights, and the way in which knowledge and images of children circulate and get used and maneuvered.
From 2013 to 2016, David was Head of the Department of Sociology, and is currently Pro-Warden Research & Enterprise.
David supervises PhD students across the range of his research interests
Oswell, David. 2013. The Agency Of Children: From Family to Global Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521604703
Oswell, David. 2006. Culture and Society: An introduction to Cultural Studies. Sage. ISBN 0761942696
Oswell, David. 2002. Television, Childhood and the Home: A History of the Making of the Child Television Audience in Britain. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198742606
Oswell, David, ed. 2010. Cultural Theory, Volumes 1-4. London: SAGE. ISBN 978-1848607057
Oswell, David. 2018. What Space for a Children’s Politics? Rethinking Infancy in Childhood Studies. In: Spyros Spyrou; Rachel Rosen and Daniel Thomas Cook, eds. Reimagining Childhood Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 199-211. ISBN 9781350019225
Oswell, David. 2016. Re-aligning children's agency and re-socialising children in Childhood Studies. In: Florian Esser; Meike Baader; Tanja Betz and Beatrice Hungerland, eds. Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood: New Perspectives in Childhood Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 19-33. ISBN 1138854190
Oswell, David. 2010. Cultural Theory: Genealogies, Orientations and Territories. In: David Oswell, ed. Cultural Theory. London: Sage, xxi-xlviii. ISBN 9781848607057
Oswell, David. 2009. Infancy and Experience: Voice, Politics, and Bare Life. European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1), pp. 135-154. ISSN 1368-4310
Oswell, David. 2009. Yet to Come? Globality and the Sound of an Infant Politics. Radical Politics Today, 1(1), pp. 1-18.
Oswell, David. 2007. Infancy, Generation and Experience: Notes on the Sociological Empirical and Toward a Political Theory of Children’s Association. Sociology Working Papers, pp. 1-18.
Cultural studies, media and communication studies, sociology of science and technology, sociology of childhood and social theory
