Welcome to my personal website. I’m Richard Howells, a cultural sociologist, lecturer, author and broadcaster. My books include Visual Culture (now it in its third edtion), The Myth of the Titanic, and A Critical Theory of Creativity: Utopia, Aesthetics, Atheism and Design. I specialise in the study of visual and popular culture, together with media and cultural theory. I'm Emeritus Professor of Cultural Sociology at King's College London. In 2015 I was a Visiting Scholar at St John's College, University of Oxford, and in 2017 I was both a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College and a Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford.

Watch my TEDx talk on Utopia recorded live at the Courtauld Instiute of Art.

Mrs Andrews' selfie: Detail from the cover of the new edition of my Visual Culture book.

This may look like a Leonardo. but actually it's a copy by Roger Fry. I wrote about it in my article on Bloomsbury Group copies of Old Master paintings.

I discuss creativity  with the Le Gun art collective: recorded live at King's College London