User:Slenderhooligan/Garry Crawford

Garry Crawford (born 1972) is a British sociologists whose research focuses primarily on audience and consumer patterns, and in particular, sport fan and video gamer cultures.

A former researcher at the Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research at the University of Leicester his doctoral research (at the University of Salford) and early publications focused on British ice hockey, its history and supporters.

His first book ‘Consuming Sport’ (2004) was the first book to explicitly consider the consumer patterns, media use and everyday practices of sport fans, which Martin Johnes in the International Journal of the History of Sport described as “a very important contribution to the field of sports studies”.

His interests in fan and media consumption have led Garry Crawford to publish on a wide range of subjects including cultural theory, film and beer, and in recent years, most notably, video gamer culture. His research and writing here seeks to understand video game culture away from the sight of a games machine, and consider video games within complex everyday social and cultural patterns.

Garry Crawford is the Director of University of Salford Digital Cluster, which the British governments’ Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) report 'Higher Ambitions' in November 2009 described as “a forum and centre of excellence, which combines and leads on high quality research, academic enterprise and teaching in areas of informatics, digital media, and new and convergent technologies”

Garry Crawford is also the Director of British Sociological Association Publications, and review editor for the journal Cultural Sociology.

Selected publications

 * Video Gamers (2011) ISBN 978041555620-0
 * Online Gaming in Context: The Social and Cultural Significance of Online Gaming (2011) (edited with Victoria K. Gosling & Ben Light) ISBN 9780415563680
 * Theorising the Contemporary Sports Supporter ISBN 9783838359762.
 * The Sage Dictionary of Leisure Studies (2009) (with Tony Blackshaw) ISBN 9781412919951
 * Introducing Cultural Studies (Second Edition) (2008) (with Brian Longhurst, Greg Smith, Gaynor Bagnall and Michael Ogborn) ISBN 97814058-58434.
 * Consuming Sport: Sport, Fans and Culture (2004) ISBN 0415288916