Rate My Professor Mark Banks

Professor Mark Banks is Professor of Cultural Economy and Head of Subject for Cultural Industries in the School of Culture & Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow, where he joined in 2020. He teaches on the MSc in Creative Industries and Cultural Policy and serves as Research Convenor for the School. Previously, he held the position of Professor and founding Director of the CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies at the University of Leicester, was Reader in Sociology at The Open University, and lectured at Manchester Metropolitan University, beginning his career at the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture in the late 1990s. Banks supervises PhD students on topics including podcasting and pedagogy for sustainability, music as a driver for sustainable placemaking, and authentic practices in podcasting.

His research specializations encompass the cultural and creative industries, focusing on work and employment, culture-economy relations, participation, and social justice, with particular interests in the visual arts, music, and media industries, as well as cultural theory, cultural value, cities, and popular culture. Current research addresses how cultural industries can achieve greater social and creative justice and connect to ecological politics through post-growth, well-being, and transitional economies. He has authored or co-authored 44 publications, including the books Creative Justice: Cultural Industries, Work and Inequality (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017) and The Politics of Cultural Work (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), the co-edited volume Cultural Industries and the Environmental Crisis: New Approaches for Policy (Springer, 2020), and articles such as "Cultural work and contributive justice" (Journal of Cultural Economy, 2023), "The unanticipated pleasures of the future: degrowth, postgrowth and popular cultural economies" (New Formations, 2022), and "'A plague upon your howling': art and culture in the viral emergency" (Cultural Trends, 2021). Major grants include Principal Investigator roles on "It Takes a Region to Raise an Artist" (AHRC Creative Economy Engagement Fellowship, 2018) and "The Values of Cultural Work" (AHRC Cultural Value Project, 2013), and Co-Investigator on "Gypsies Forging Sustainable Futures" (AHRC, 2024). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), and has been Visiting Professor in Commercial Music at the University of Westminster (2015-2018) and Visiting Fellow at the University of Norrköping (2006).