Tyler Leeds

Biography

Tyler Leeds is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. His research examines connections between politics, media, and knowledge in the US. Leeds’s wide-ranging empirical interests are united by a commitment to extending theoretical traditions, including those of Stuart Hall, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Pierre Bourdieu. Examples of his research projects include an ethnographic study of rural activism along the Oregon-California border, an analysis of social media advertisements denigrating the 1619 Project, and a reconsideration of Bourdieusian theory in light of biomedical pain models. His work has been recognized with awards from four sections of the American Sociological Association and appears in Social Problems, Sociological Theory, and New Media & Society, among other publications. Leeds earned his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, where his teaching was honored at the departmental and university levels. Prior to becoming a sociologist, Leeds had a career in newspaper journalism.