Garry Crawford

Professor Garry Crawford is a British sociologist whose research focuses primarily on audiences and consumer patterns, and in particular, sports fans^[1] and video gamers.^[2]

Garry Crawford began his academic career as researcher at the Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research at the University of Leicester, his doctoral research (at the University of Salford) and early publications focused on British ice hockey, its history and supporters.

His first book Consuming Sport (2004) was the first book to explicitly consider the consumption patterns, media use and everyday practices of sports fans,^[3] which Martin Johnes in the International Journal of the History of Sport described as “a very important contribution to the field of sports studies”.^[4] His interests in fans and media consumption have led Garry Crawford to publish on a wide range of subjects including cultural studies, film, gender, leisure and beer, and in recent years, most notably, video game culture. His research and writing here seeks to understand gaming culture away from the sight of a games machine, and consider video games within complex everyday social and cultural patterns.

Garry Crawford works at the University of Salford, where he is a Professor of Sociology and is the Director of the University of Salford Digital Cluster, which the British governments’ Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) report Higher Ambitions in November 2009 described as “a forum and centre of excellence, which combines and leads on high quality research, academic enterprise and teaching in areas of informatics, digital media, and new and convergent technologies”.^[5]

Garry Crawford is also a Trustee of the British Sociological Association, and review editor for the journal Cultural Sociology. He is also a member of the University of Salford's Centre for Social Research (CSR.Salford).

Selected publications

• Video Gamers (2012) ISBN 9780415674416
• Online Gaming in Context: The Social and Cultural Significance of Online Gaming (2011) (edited with Victoria K. Gosling & Ben Light) ISBN 978-0-415-55619-4
• Theorising the Contemporary Sports Supporter (2010) ISBN 978-3-8383-5976-2
• The Sage Dictionary of Leisure Studies (2009) (with Tony Blackshaw) ISBN 978-1-4129-1995-1
• Introducing Cultural Studies (Second Edition) (2008) (with Brian Longhurst, Greg Smith, Gaynor Bagnall and Michael Ogborn) ISBN 978-1-4058-5843-4
• Consuming Sport: Sport, Fans and Culture (2004) ISBN 0-415-28891-6

References

External links

• Academia.edu profile
• British Sociological Association Publications
• University of Salford Digital Cluster
• BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed interview (2005)