Brian Loader

Who is Brian Loader?

Brian D. Loader is a British scholar and Associate Director of the Science and Technology Studies Research Unit and political sociologist at the University of York, UK. Brian joined the Department of Sociology at York in January 2006. His areas of research are new media and participatory cultures, young citizens and political engagement, and community informatics. His overarching interest is in new media communications technologies, and the social, political and economic factors shaping their development and diffusion, and their implications for social, economic, political and cultural change. Brian is the founding Editor of the international journal Information, Communication and Society and has published widely in this area.

Born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in 1958 Brian grew up in the UK in Surrey before studying at Southampton University between 1978 and 1981 where he obtained a BSc in Politics and Sociology. He taught public and social policy at Southampton Institute of Higher Education and gained a Master of Public Policy from the University of Bristol in 1989. Moving north to work at the University of Teesside he taught first in the School of Social Sciences before establishing and directing the Community Informatics Research and Applications Unit in 1996.