Event Details

Lancaster University Management School is excited to invite you to our Inaugural Lecture Series, a special set of public lectures celebrating the careers of our newest Professors.

Each lecture features a brief presentation by one of our Professors, offering an overview of their research and a glimpse into their personal academic journey.

This year, the lectures are hybrid, so you can attend in person or online via MS Teams, making them accessible to a broad audience including staff, students, alumni, and the wider public. Each session lasts approximately 60 minutes, including time for both the presentation and audience Q&A.

An inaugural lecture is a distinguished academic event, marking a colleague’s promotion to professorship—a significant milestone in their career. These lectures offer a unique opportunity for our newly appointed Professors to share their pioneering research, highlight achievements in research, innovation, engagement, and teaching, and showcase the societal impact of their work.

The series is free and open to everyone. Whether you are an expert in the field or simply curious, we warmly welcome all staff, students, their guests, and members of the local community to join us in celebrating these academic milestones.

Professor Joe Deville

Professor Joe Deville is Professor of Science and Technology Studies, based jointly in Lancaster University’s Department of Organisation, Work and Technology and School of Arts. He is also Director of the Centre for Science Studies.

Joe’s research explores the relationship between people, organisations, technology and society, with particular interests in open access publishing, scholarly communication, debt and finance, autonomous systems, algorithmic prediction and credit scoring.

A key focus of his work is creating fairer and more sustainable ways for scholarly knowledge to be shared. He is Principal Investigator of the Open Book Futures project and Managing Director of the Open Book Collective, an independent non-profit supporting open access book publishing.

His wider research examines how technologies and financial systems shape everyday life, including the experiences of people living with debt and the ways organisations use data and automated systems to make decisions.

Joe is the author of Lived Economies of Default and has co-edited two further books. His work brings together science and technology studies, economic sociology and organisational theory to explore some of the ways technology, finance and society intersect.

Join us for Joe’s inaugural lecture to hear more about his research journey and the questions that have shaped his work.