John B. Thompson

John B. Thompson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He received a BA from Keele in 1975 and a PhD from Cambridge in 1979. He was a Research Fellow at Jesus College from 1979 to 1984. He was appointed Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cambridge in 1985, Reader in Sociology in 1994 and Professor of Sociology in 2001. He has held Visiting Professorships at universities in the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, China and South Africa. His main areas of research are contemporary social and political theory; sociology of the media and modern culture; the social organization of the media industries; the social and political impact of information and communication technologies; and the changing forms of political communication.

Recent publications include Ideology and Modern Culture (1990), The Media and Modernity (1995), Political Scandal (2000), Books in the Digital Age (2005) and Merchants of Culture (2010). He was awarded the European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and the Social Sciences in 2001 for his work on political scandal. He is currently working on the impact of the digital revolution on the book publishing industry.