Dr Mark Taylor

Sheffield Methods Institute

Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Social Sciences and AHRC Leadership Fellow

m.r.taylor@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 8380

Interdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences (ICOSS)

Full contact details

Dr Mark Taylor
Sheffield Methods Institute
Interdisciplinary Centre of the Social Sciences (ICOSS)
219 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP

Profile

Mark is Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Sheffield Methods Institute, and the Director of the MA in Social Research. Before Sheffield, Mark worked as a research associate on the large AHRC Connected Communities-funded Understanding Everyday Participation: Articulating Cultural Values project, based at the University of Manchester; he previously worked at the University of York, and received his DPhil from the University of Oxford.

Mark’s background is in sociology and philosophy, but his research interests are interdisciplinary, across sociology, cultural policy, cultural economy, music, and other fields. His research primarily focuses on understanding the relationship between culture and inequality, broadly-defined, and he has worked with a wide range of partners both within academia and across the cultural sector.

Research interests

Mark's research covers four main areas: social inequality in cultural consumption; the social makeup of cultural and creative work, and how this has changed over time; the attitudes and values of people working in the cultural and creative sectors; and the evidence for the social impact of culture.

He was co-investigator on the 2017-18 AHRC project "Who is missing from the picture? The problem of inequality in the creative economy and what we can do about it." He's also involved in the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities' Creative Economy Engagement Fellowship scheme as Fellowship Coordinator (2018) and mentor (2019).

His recent research along with colleagues is summarised in the paper Panic: Social Class, Taste, and Inequalities in the Creative Industries, distributed by Barbican.

Publications

Books

Brook O, Taylor M & O'Brien D (2020) Culture Is Bad for You Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries. Manchester University Press.
Bell A, Hartman T, Piekut A, Rae A & Taylor M (2020) Making Sense of Data in the Media. Sage.

Journal articles

Brook O, O’Brien D & Taylor M (2019) Inequality talk : how discourses by senior men reinforce exclusions from creative occupations. European Journal of Cultural Studies. View this article in WRRO
McAndrew S, O’Brien D & Taylor M (2019) The values of culture? Social closure in the political identities, policy preferences, and social attitudes of cultural and creative workers. The Sociological Review. View this article in WRRO
Hanquinet L, O’Brien D & Taylor M (2019) The coming crisis of cultural engagement? Measurement, methods, and the nuances of niche activities. Cultural Trends, 28(2-3), 198-219.
Baker G, Bull A & Taylor M (2018) Who watches the watchmen? Evaluating evaluations of El Sistema. British Journal of Music Education, 35(3), 255-269. View this article in WRRO
Campbell P, O Brien D & Taylor M (2018) Cultural Engagement and the Economic Performance of the Cultural and Creative Industries: An Occupational Critique. Sociology, 53(2), 347-367. View this article in WRRO
Oman S & Taylor M (2018) Subjective well-being in cultural advocacy: a politics of research between the market and the academy. Journal of Cultural Economy, 11(3), 225-243. View this article in WRRO
Taylor MR & O'Brien D (2017) ‘Culture is a Meritocracy’: Why Creative Workers’ Attitudes may Reinforce Social Inequality. Sociological Research Online, 22(4), 27-47. View this article in WRRO
Harris S, Nichols GS & Taylor M (2017) Bowling even more alone: trends towards individual participation in sport. European Sport Management Quarterly, 17(3), 290-311. View this article in WRRO
Taylor M (2016) Taking Part: the next five years (2016) by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Cultural Trends, 25(4), 291-294. View this article in WRRO
Taylor MR (2016) Nonparticipation or different styles of participation? Alternative interpretations from Taking Part. Cultural Trends, 25(3: Everyday Participation and Cultural Value. Part 1), 169-181. View this article in WRRO
Savage M, Devine F, Cunningham N, Friedman S, Laurison D, Miles A, Snee H & Taylor M (2015) On Social Class, Anno 2014. Sociology, 49(6), 1011-1030.
Beer D & Taylor M (2013) The Hidden Dimensions of the Musical Field and the Potential of the New Social Data. Sociological Research Online, 18(2), 11-21.
Savage M, Devine F, Cunningham N, Taylor M, Li Y, Hjellbrekke J, Le Roux B, Friedman S & Miles A (2013) A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment. Sociology, 47(2), 219-250.
Brook O, O’Brien D & Taylor M () “There’s No Way That You Get Paid to Do the Arts”: Unpaid Labour Across the Cultural and Creative Life Course. Sociological Research Online, 136078041989529-136078041989529.

Chapters

Brook O, O’Brien D & Taylor M (2020) Art Workers, Inequality, and the Labour Market: Values, Norms, and Alienation Across Three Generations of Artists, The Sociology of Arts and Markets (pp. 75-96). Springer International Publishing
Graham H, Hill K, Matthews P, O'Brien D & Taylor M (2019) Connecting epistemologies and the early career researcher In Fenby-Hulse K, Heywood E & Walker K (Ed.), Research Impact and the Early Career Researcher: Lived Experiences, New Perspectives
Taylor M, Brook O & O'Brien D (2019) The creative economy, the creative class and cultural intermediation In Jones P, Perry B & Long P (Ed.), Cultural Intermediaries Connecting Communities: Revisiting Approaches to Cultural Engagement (pp. 27-42). Bristol: Policy Press.

Datasets

Marsh J, Arnseth DHC, Beech A, Bishop J, Blum-Ross DA, Chesworth E, Dýrfjörð K, Ellis H, Erstad PO, Fashanu C , Hjartarson DT et al Makerspaces in the Early Years: Current Perceptions and Practices of Early Years Practitioners, Library and Museum Educators and Makerspace Staff - A Survey.
Marsh J, Beech A, Bishop J, Chesworth E, Ellis H, Fashanu C, Hyatt D, Kay L, Kontopodis M, Ktenidis A , Lahmar J et al UK (Sheffield) (Makerspaces in the Early Years).

Current research

Panic! What happened to social mobility in the arts? is a collaboration with Create London, Barbican, the Guardian, Goldsmiths, and the British Art Show. This project collected primary survey and interview data on people working in the cultural sector.

Who is missing from the picture? The problem of inequality in the creative economy and what we can do about it is an AHRC-funded project investigating social inequality in creative work, focusing particularly on changes in the social origins in the creative sector over time, and on the attitudes and values of people working in creative work. It is a collaboration between the SMI, the Edinburgh College of Art, Barbican, Create London, and Arts Emergency.

Makerspaces in the early years: enhancing digital literacy and creativity is an ERC-funded project investigating maker cultures and young children, partnering makerspaces in a wide range of countries with universities. Through this project, Mark was seconded to Victoria University (Melbourne, Australia) and FabLab Berlin.

Laboratory Adelaide: The Value of Culture, based at Flinders University (Adelaide, Australia) is an ARC-funded project investigating the value of culture beyond dollar amounts. Mark worked in Adelaide for a month investigating existing survey data to understand how people articulated their experiences of the Adelaide Festival.