I am a cultural sociologist specialising in visual and popular culture, together with cultural, Utopian, and critical theory. I graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard before gaining my doctorate at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. I am now Emeritus Professor of Cultural Sociology at King’s College London. My books include three editions of Visual Culture (2003, 2012 and 2019; the second and third with Joaquim Negreiros); A Critical Theory of Creativity: Utopia, Aesthetics, Atheism and Design (2015; paperback 2017); The Myth of the Titanic (1999 and 2012); Using Visual Evidence (2009, edited with Robert Matson, University of Pittsburgh); and Outrage: Art, Controversy, and Society, edited with Andrea Ritivoi and Judith Schachter (Center for the Arts in Society, Carnegie Mellon University, 2012). I live in London and West Sussex with my wife, the designer Sarah Howson.