I joined the University of Manchester in September 1999. My previous position was Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, where I held my first permanent position after completing a Ph.D. on the British Labour Party at the University of Leeds. In the past I have conducted research on politics, social movements, cities, domestic divisions of labour, economic restructuring and the social structure of Britain.

On coming to Manchester I worked partly in the Sociology Department and partly as Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC). Research projects in CRIC focused on developing theories of consumption, with particular emphasis on food, and on economic sociology. With other colleagues, in what is now the Sociology Discipline Area of the School of Social Sciences, I worked on the sociology of consumption, sociology of culture, sociology of food and eating, and social stratification. Other affiliations included the ESRC-funded Sustainable Practices Research Group (SPRG) and the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC).

Since 2007 I have been a Professorial Fellow in the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) which has provided the focal point of my recent activity. I have conducted several projects on food from within the SCI and currently I have just completed in a repeat study of eating out in Britain. A monograph will be published by Manchester University Press: Warde A, Paddock J and Whillans J, The Social Significance of  Dining Out: continuity and change. Manchester, Manchester University Press, May 2020. Other recent books include Consumption: a sociological analysis (Palgrave, 2017) and The Practice of Eating (Polity, 2016).

Keywords: Consumption, cultural sociology, economic sociology, food and eating, social networks, social and cultural capital, social stratification, sustainable consumption.

Current substantive work is concerned with:

•             the sociology of eating, particularly change in habits in Britain, France and the USA, and the practice of dining out;

•             the sociology of consumption, especially the changing patterns of cultural consumption in the UK and the nature of consumer culture in Europe;

•             cultural capital, distinction and cultural practice in comparative perspective;

•             social class analysis;

•             the analysis of social change

•             the development of British Sociology.

Teaching