photo of Tim Jordan

Prof Tim Jordan

Post:Co-Director (Sussex Digital Humanities Lab)

Biography

I am Professor of Digital Cultures. My pronouns are he/him.

My most recent project has been working on new economic practices in digital contexts. A key outcome is a book called The Digital Economy that will be published in December 2019 for Polity Press (http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509517558). In that book I examine a range of case studies, including Google/Baidu and search, Facebook and social media, Uber/AirBnB and regulatory disintermediation, free and open source software production and online games, among others.

I am currently a Co-Director of the Sussex Humanities Lab and am Deputy Head of Subject Area for Media, Journalism and Cultural Studies, responsibility for curriculum.

I've been involved in analysis of the social and cultural meaning of the internet and cyberspace since the mid-1990s. My most recent book is Information Politics: liberation and exploitation in the digital society (Pluto, 2015) which is about the politics of information. I've also been working with colleagues on the idea of 'being in the zone' among surfers and computer programmers which has appeared as a collected edition Culture, Identity and Intense Performativity: being in the zone (Routledge 2017) that I've co-edited with Professor Kath Woodward and Dr Brigid McClure.

Prior to this my research has been about communication and the internet, published in Internet, Society, Culture; communicative practices before and after the internet (Bloomsbury 2013) in which I compare letters from 1832-1857 to Australia with communication in online games. I've also had a longstanding interest in hacking and hacktivism and have previously published: Hacking: digital media and technological determinism (Polity 2008), Cyberpower (Routledge 1999) and, with Paul Taylor, Hacktivism and Cyberwars (Routledge 2004).

I also played a role in analysing social movements and popular protest with publications including Activism!: direct action, hacktivism and the future of society (Reaktion 2002), as co-editor of Storming the Millennium (Lawrence and Wishart1999, with Adam Lent) and I was a founding editor of the Taylor and Francis journal Social Movement Studies.

In addition to his books on social movements and internet cultures, I've published on Pokemon, surfing and technology and cultural theory. I began at the University of Sussex in 2014. Prior to this I worked at King’s College London for three years and at Sociology at the Open University for eleven years, contributing there widely to teaching and co-editing the books Security: sociology and the making of social worlds (Manchester University Press 2008, with Simon Carter and Sophie Watson) and Social Change (Blackwell 2002, with Steve Pile).

I am an editor on the journal Global Media and China, and on the editorial boards of New Media and Society, Social Movement Studies and Fast Capitalism.

I was Head of School of the School of Media, Film and Music at Sussex University from 2014 to 2018. I have been Head of the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King's College London and of the Department of Sociology at the Open University.

Role

Professor of Digital Cultures