Luke Yates is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on protest, everyday life, consumption and technology. He is programme director of Manchester's BSocSc in Sociology, co-organiser of Manchester’s long-standing research group on social movements and alternative futures and a researcher in the Sustainable Consumption Institute. 

Current and recent research has included the examination of the political tactics of digital 'platform' economy businesses such as Uber and Airbnb (public report here, open-access article here, book here); collective action and social practice theory, 'everyday' life and its relationships with politics and consumption, changes in everyday practices (around eating habits and economies of sharing in households), and strategy in social movements, especially as it relates to prefigurative politics. See Research tab for more. 

Specific research interests

• Social movements, protest, political action
• Sociology of consumption and socio-economic change 
• The politics of the new digital 'platform economy'
• Imagination, 'futures' and prefigurative politics 
• Everyday life 
• Everyday practices, particularly living arrangements, sharing, food, and households

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students with interests in 

• social movements and protest
• labour movements
• digital sociology / the platform economy
• consumer culture
• environmental sociology
• alternative institutions and economic practices
• prefigurative politics
• theories of practice
• political strategy