Introducing the Core Team

• Promotional Cultures: I take a feminist political economy perspective to research the relationships between cultural and creative workers, platforms and advertising.

• Influencers: I research the experiences of professional content creators in the UK, particularly beauty and fashion influencers. My research examines the professionalisation of digital production, and how the work of influencers relates to other creative and media industries in the UK, especially the pervasive gendered, raced and classed inequalities in these spaces.

• Algorithms: I research how social media algorithms are understood by the people who use them. Practically, algorithms are often 'black boxed' - meaning how they work is either intentionally, or more likely, practically obscured for audiences and users. I examine the folk theories, gossip and knowledge-sharing that is shared to understand how algorithms work - which shapes how content creators understand and produce culture on these platforms. I also look at the professional spaces that research algorithms and sell this expertise, for example in Search Engine Optimisation.

Her current projects include:

• Studying the experiences of beauty influencers within rapidly changing digital marketing industries (particularly alongside understandings of 'algorithms').

• Looking at how artists and craftspeople use social media platforms to promote their work.

• The development of a public facing research method - Algorithmic Autobiographies and Fictions - a project that encourages participants to use their ad data as a creative prompt for fiction writing and artistic interpretation.

My research covers several areas specific to cultural and creative industries, along with more general sociological questions. I have published extensively on questions of inequality in the cultural and creative industries, with a particular focus on social mobility in cultural and creative occupations. Inequality connects to my interest in equity, diversity and inclusion in the creative economy, an area which I have several academic and policy focused publications and research projects.

I have also, in connection with my work on inequalities in the workforce, researched inequalities in cultural consumption, using new data sources to understand the stratification of taste in contemporary society.

Both of these areas form my current research agenda, with several current and forthcoming papers, alongside research projects including the AHRC PEC.

Previously I have worked on questions concerning cultural value, and have also published on urban regeneration, particularly focused on culture-led regeneration and cultural events, including the European Capital of Culture.

Primarily interested in how people engage with material culture in museums (the encounter between a person and a thing), not least through developing collaborative creative projects with artists, Alex is also interested in how the museum workforce is supported to flourish. To that end, she initiated and is currently working with the UK Museums Association to undertake the first ever piece of research on bullying in the museums sector. In addition, she is involved in object-based research in heritage tourism sites in India, particularly in the City Palace Museum in Jaipur and in Buddhist monasteries in Ladakh, where she has collaborated with Professor Sandra Dudley (University of Leicester), Professor Manvi Seth (National Museum Institute, New Delhi) and an international team of researchers.

Alex's research methods are qualitative, often including reflexive interview, participant observation and visual methods. Her PhD is from the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester and is entitled 'Sensory Engagements with Objects in Arts Galleries: Material Interpretation and Theological Metaphor'.