Andrew Branch

I am interested in making sense of the workings of the creative industries, held up as drivers of progressive social and economic change by successive governments intent on superintending them. Drawing inspiration from the philosophical anthropology of Pierre Bourdieu, my research focus is on how workers in these industries - and the aspirational students of today who will be their successors - negotiate the complex relations between commercial imperatives and creative practice. I situate this interest in the wider context of examining how subjectivities are formed, embodied, negotiated and captured in media discourses, as well as their expression in the field of education by those accumulating capital.