Steven Threadgold is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Newcastle. His research focuses on youth and class, with particular interests in unequal and alternate work and career trajectories; underground and independent creative scenes; and cultural formations of taste. Steve is the co-director of the Newcastle Youth Studies Network, an Associate Editor of Journal of Youth Studies, and on the Editorial Boards of The Sociological Review and Journal of Applied Youth Studies. His latest book is Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities (2020, Bristol University Press). Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles (2018, Routledge) won the 2020 Raewyn Connell Prize for best first book in Australian sociology. Steve’s current research projects are on online cultural taste communities called ‘Dank Distinction and Homologies of Snark’; the Australian Research Council funded ‘Young Hospitality Workers and Value Creation in the Service Economy’ investigating the immaterial forms of labour young people perform to create value in the night-time economy; and the research program ‘Regional youth in precarious times: Work, wellbeing and debt’.