Accessibility statement

Dr James Cummings
Lecturer in Sociology

Biography

I am a Lecturer in Sociology. My research explores gender, sexuality and identity. I am interested in how these are negotiated and contested both in contexts of everyday life and across life courses, as well as within different cultural and political settings. I have primarily worked with queer men and masculine identified people in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United Kingdom (UK).

I work ethnographically and from phenomenological perspectives, exploring how people understand themselves though their relations to others and how those relations are situated in and shaped by specific political, spatial, temporal, technological and economic contexts.

Before joining the Department of Sociology at the University of York, I was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at Newcastle University developing publications from my earlier research with gay men in the PRC. Prior to that, I worked as a Senior Research Associate on the Digital Intimacies project at the University of East Anglia and King’s College London, which explored relationships between intimacy and smartphone technologies for queer men and masculine identified people in the UK. I continue to collaborate with this research team. Earlier still, I was a Research Associate on the METADAC project at Newcastle University, conducting ethnographic research into data governance across several UK-based health and social data banks.

In 2018, I completed my PhD in Sociology at Newcastle University, focusing on the everyday lives and self-understandings of gay men in Hainan, an island province of the PRC. In addition to living in Hainan for 18 months, fieldwork for this research involved working in a local gay bar and with the Hainan branch of True Self the PRC’s largest LGBTQ+ organisation.

My PhD was preceded by an MLitt in Chinese Studies and a BA in Modern Languages (Chinese and Spanish), both at Newcastle University.

Contact details

Dr James Cummings
Lecturer
Department of Sociology LMB/235
University of York
YO10 5GD

Tel: +44(0)1904 32 8765