Torsten Geelan

Sociological research on trade union movements, media counter-power, and just transitions

Bio

I am an economic sociologist interested in trade union movements, media counter-power, and just transitions to sustainable economies and societies.

I am currently a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Economic Sociology and the Future of Work at the University of Bristol. My research is comparative and interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from industrial relations, environmental sociology, environmental labour studies, critical social theory, and media and communication studies. Prior to joining the University of Bristol, I worked as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Sociology, and as a Lecturer in Sociology of Work and Employment at the University of Leicester Business School. I hold an MPhil and PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Economics and Social Studies from the University of Manchester.

My EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie project Eco-Unions (2021-2024) explores how the trade union movement is navigating the so-called ‘jobs versus environment’ dilemma. The project focuses on two new labor-environmental coalitions in Denmark and the UK, and analyses the environmental discourses being produced and circulated across the interconnected arenas of union strategizing, climate policy-making, and public debate. In particular, I’m interested in understanding whether these discourses are able to challenge the dominance and pervasiveness of capitalist realism. During the project, I held a position as Visiting Fellow at the LSE’s world-leading Department of Media and Communications in London. In the run-up to Eco-Unions, I led a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant on the role of Twitter in organising  the 2018-2020 UK higher education strike

I’m currently the co-founder and co-chair of the Alternatives to Capitalism Research Network at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) and co-editor of the Bristol University Press book series Alternatives to Capitalism in the 21st Century. I also co-edited the Palgrave Macmillan volume, From Financial Crisis to Social Change: Towards Alternative Horizons (2018; 2020 paperback) and once worked as a columnist for the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information.

As a public speaker, I’m regularly invited to give talks to research centres, NGOs such as Rethinking Economics, and the trade union movement in England and Denmark.