School of Social Sciences

Professor Howard Davis - Overview

My profile

Howard Davis was appointed Professor of Social Theory and Institutions at Bangor in 1997 and was Head of the School of Social Sciences from 1999-2007. He worked previously at the universities of Kent, Glasgow and Edinburgh. His research interests include the sociology of the media, identities, cultures of technology, and the social organization of creative work. As a founder member of the Glasgow Media Group he co-authored numerous publications by the group on television news reporting. He has published on the trajectories of social and cultural change in western and eastern Europe before and after the end of communism, combining his research interests with a series of EU Tempus Tacis funded projects to develop the social sciences curriculum at Kazan State University and the central Volga region of Russia. His book on the social organization of creativity in the cultural industries (with R. Scase, Managing Creativity, Open University Press, 2000) was based on ESRC-funded empirical research in TV and radio, publishing, music, advertising and the performing arts.

His current areas of research activity reflect these interests. They include work on:

post-Soviet media and culture, in collaboration with a network involving colleagues in the EU, Russia and central Asia
the experiences of English in-migrants to Wales
creativity in film and television in an interactive media environment
the evolution and meaning of European identities