Dr Thomas Thurnell-Read
Thomas is Reader in Sociology at Loughborough University. He is an internationally recognised expert on the role of pubs and drinking culture in British society and is author of numerous articles and books, including Intoxication: Self, state and society (2023) and Drinking Dilemmas: Space, culture and identity (2015). Thomas is a founding member of the British Sociological Association’s Alcohol Study Group and has presented his research to diverse audiences in the UK, Denmark, Portugal, France, Sweden, Japan and Taiwan. He has extensive experience of media engagement and public dissemination and his research has featured in The Observer; The Conversation; Vice.com; The Economist and The Morning Advertiser; and on BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed.
Thomas is the author of 2021’s Open Arms Report: The role of pubs in tackling loneliness, which was commissioned by the Campaign to End Loneliness.
Beyond his work on the social and cultural aspects of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness, his other research interests include ongoing work on men and masculinity with a focus on identity, friendship and wellbeing.
Dr Robert Deakin
Robert is a Post Doctoral Research Associate at Loughborough University. An anthropologist by training, his research is broadly concerned with people’s experiences and responses to urban and social change, and how these both reflect and remake structural inequalities. His PhD explored the intersections of race and class inequality amid urban regeneration in Poplar, east London, drawing on 18-months’ ethnographic research with social housing estate residents engaged with heritage projects (including a pub).
He currently works with Dr Thomas Thurnell-Read on a two-year project exploring the causes and consequences of pub closure in the UK.
Alongside publishing in The British Journal of Sociology, Critique of Anthropology and Roadsides, Robert has used filmmaking in research and dissemination: a 25-minute film ‘Jimmy’s Archive’, co-directed with a research participant, has been screened across academic conference, classroom and community settings.