Dr Tony Sampson
Email
tsamps@essex.ac.ukTelephone
+44 (0) 1206 874281
Location
EBS.3.29, Colchester Campus
Academic support hours
For arranging an in-person or Zoom meeting, please contact me through my Essex email.
Biography
Dr. Tony D. Sampson is a Reader in Digital Communication at the University of Essex's Essex Business School. His research and teaching address two interconnected strands that explore the emotional, sensory, and affective experiences of digital and analogue worlds. In the digital realm, Tony has published extensively on topics such as digital communications, marketing, labour, virality, neuroculture, and user experience (UX). In the analogue sphere, he applies concepts from “emotional geography” to inform local community development and activism projects. Across both strands of his work, Tony investigates how the spatio-temporal environments people inhabit evoke, shape, or suppress their experiences. These affective relationships with time and space, in turn, influence how experiences are understood, used, and transformed. This research contributes to a critical understanding of the dynamics of power, inclusion, and marginalization across digital and physical contexts of experience. Tony's main digital communication publications include: The Spam Book, co-edited with Jussi Parikka (Hampton Press, 2009) Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) The Assemblage Brain: Sense Making in Neuroculture (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) Affect and Social Media (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) A Sleepwalker's Guide to Social Media (Polity, 2020) The Struggle for User Experience: Experiments in Birth, School, Work, Death (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming) Between 2014 and 2022, Tony organized seven successful Affect and Social Media annual conferences in East London. He welcomes MPhil/PhD applicants interested in: Critical perspectives on digital design labour/practices Digital design industry dynamics UX and HCI theory and practice Emerging technologies (AI, immersive, XR, etc.) Digital aesthetics, perception, and affect theory Cognitive, neuro, affective, and emotional labour Community Development and Emotional Geographies Tony is also a co-founder of the Cultural Engine Research Group (CERG), based in Essex and East London. CERG works across disciplines, directly engaging with communities, local authorities, charities, not-for-profit organizations, and students on projects related to: Place, Emotion, and Community (particularly in relation to Levelling-Up narratives and new policy initatives) Tourism and Heritage Public Realm Digital Cultures and Smart Cities Creative Industries Education Public Health Food Cultures See examples of CERG’s work on UoE's website. As part of CERG’s remit, Tony also welcomes MPhil/PhD applicants interested in community-based projects and critical theory research into concepts such as emotional geography, pride-in-place, levelling up, and community wealth building.
Qualifications
PhD Sociology University of Essex, (2008)
Masters Multimedia and Cultural Production University of East London, (2002)
BSc Multimedia Technology University of Greenwich, (1998)
