Class, Control, and Classical Music awarded prize

I am delighted to have been jointly awarded the Philip Abrams Memorial prize by the British Sociological Association for my book Class, Control, and Classical Music. This prize is for the best first sole-authored book within the discipline of sociology and needless to say it’s a huge honour to be joint winner. This is in fact the first prize I’ve ever won for doing sociology, which makes it particularly special, and the recognition helps to make the many years of work that went into this book feel even more worthwhile.

You can listen to a short interview with one of the prize judges, Richard Waller, with me about the book here. The prize was also awarded to Owen Abbott for his book The Self, Relational Sociology and Morality in Practice, which looks great and I can’t wait to read it. There were some fantastic books nominated and all 20 of them look worth reading. One that I’ve already read is Ali Meghji’s Black Middle Class Britannia, which I would highly recommend – a hugely important book looking at high cultural consumption among Black middle-class people in London, which is essential reading for understanding intersections of race and class in the UK.

Podcast about ‘Class, Control, and Classical Music’

I recorded a podcast interview with Dr Dave O’Brien for the New Books Network about my book. You can have a listen here – it’s about 45 minutes long and gives an overview of some of the key ideas in the book (and there’s loads of other great podcasts with academic authors on the New Books Network, so it’s worth checking out!)