معرفی
Toby Bennett serves as Senior Lecturer in Media, Culture & Organisation at the University of Westminster's School of Media and Communications. He leads the MA Global Media Business program in partnership with the Communication University of China and actively contributes to the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) as coordinator of their research seminar series. Additionally, he functions as Production Editor for the Journal of Cultural Economy, demonstrating his commitment to scholarly discourse in his field.
Dr. Bennett completed his PhD at King's College London in 2016 after a professional career in music industry rights management. His academic trajectory includes Research Fellowships at Solent University and City, University of London, along with teaching appointments at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton), Queen Mary University (Business School), City University (Cultural Policy and Management), and previous roles at Westminster in Music Business. He transitioned to a full-time position at Westminster at the beginning of 2023.
His research program critically examines how media and cultural industries are organized, with particular emphasis on work, policy, and knowledge across multiple scales—from individual employees to transnational networks. Key areas of investigation include:
- Passion and administrative labor in creative work
- Gender inequalities within cultural industries
- Cultural statistics methodologies
- 'Music city' as a policy construct
- Financialization of music industries
- Global cultural production networks
- Organizational development of cultural and media theory
Dr. Bennett's 2024 monograph "Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry" (Bloomsbury) provides an ethnographic account of how major record label employees navigated digital disruption between 1999-2015. His scholarly work bridges academic theory with industry practice through participation in Horizon 2020 and German Ministry-funded creative economy projects, along with consultancy for trade bodies, journalists, and cultural organizations.
His current research agenda investigates the financialization of music, governance structures in global cultural production, and the evolving relationship between organizational theory and cultural analysis. Dr. Bennett maintains active engagement with the cultural sector while developing theoretical frameworks that capture contemporary transformations in media industries.
