Tom Mills

Lecturer in Sociology and Policy
Undergraduate Programme Director for Sociology and Policy

I am a sociologist with a particular interest in the ideas and practices of elites and the social networks that influence policy making.  I am the author of The BBC: Myth of a Public Service (Verso, 2016), a book which examines the BBC’s relationship with the ‘Establishment’ and the ways in which the rise of neoliberalism impacted on its organisational structure and culture.  Before joining Aston in 2016, I worked at the University of Bath on the ESRC funded project, ‘Understanding and Explaining Terrorism: Expertise in Practice’, research which forms the basis of the forthcoming monograph, The Politics of Terrorism Expertise.  I am the co-editor of What is Islamophobia? Racism, Social Movements and the State (Pluto Press, 2017), a book which offers a realist conception of Islamophobia as the product of concrete social, political and cultural action by the social movements and the state.

I am open to supervising PhD students with an interest in elites, media and communications, think tanks, corporate influence on public policy, Islamophobia and counter-terrorism, and neoliberalism and conservatism.