When every nanosecond of our existence is being tracked for advertising potential, should we worry? When every action on phones, computers and even in front of TVs is being stored, what should we think? When the future of nations is being gamed by hidden forces, for example, Cambridge Analytica’s political activities on Facebook, how should we respond? Is there anything that we can do?

Drawing upon findings from a recent interdisciplinary research project which tracked the trackers to try to understand values and value, Professor Bev Skeggs will show how digital systems are creating inequality in new ways and will ask what is to be done to take control of the digital world for the first time.

Bev Skeggs is the Director of the Atlantic Fellows Programme at the LSE. Before taking up this post she was Professor of Sociology, at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has published The Media; Issues in Sociology (1992); Feminist Cultural Theory (1995); Formations of Class and Gender (1997); Class, Self, Culture (2004); Sexuality and the Politics of Violence and Safety (2004) (with Les Moran) and Feminism after Bourdieu (2005) (with Lisa Adkins), and with Helen Wood, Reacting to Reality TV: Audience, Performance, Value (2012) and Reality TV and Class (2012). Between 2013-16 she was an ESRC Professorial Fellow working on a “sociology of values and value" that included projects on the digital economy and prosperity theology.

Refreshments will be available from 5.30pm onwards.

This lecture is free and all are welcome to attend.

The Keele Nursery will be open and free of charge for staff and students attending the lecture.

Please note that are no restrictions for visitors on parking in areas marked for staff parking, including the Keele Hall courtyard, from 5.00pm.

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