Professor Joe Deville
Professor of Science and Technology StudiesResearch Overview
Joe Deville is a Senior Lecturer based jointly in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology and the Department of Sociology. His research interests include:
- Scholarly publishing and open access infrastructures
- The everyday, embodied life of debt, credit and finance
- Autonomous systems, methods of algorithmic prediction, futures of credit scoring
- Science and technology studies, speculative sociology, non-representational theory
Mastodon: joe_dev@mastodon.social
X: @joe_dev
Profile
A key area of focus has been Open Access publishing and the politics of scholarly communication. I am particularly interested in researching and building the infrastructures, workflows and communities needed to change how scholarly knowledge circulates.
I am currently exploring these challenges as Principal Investigator of the Open Book Futures project, funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development Fund, and running from May 2023 until April 2026. This project follows directly from the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project which ran from November 2019 to April 2023, on which I was a Co-Investigator and which was supported by the same two funders.
In both these projects, the focus has been on ways to deliver a fairer more sustainable future for Open Access book publishing. I became interested in this work as an editor and co-founder of the small Open Access book publisher, Mattering Press.
Within the Open Book Futures project, one of my main areas of work is leading and building up the Open Book Collective (OBC). It is an independent non-profit which raises funds for book publishers and infrastructure providers deeply committed to Open Access. A key aim is the enable the OBC to be wholly self-sustaining by the end of the Open Book Futures project.
In addition, I am currently working with colleagues to explore how issues of ethics and security become entangled when organisations encounter or prepare to encounter Autonomous Systems. This work is part of the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems: Security Node, an EPSRC funded project bringing together social scientists and computer scientists. It connects to earlier work on informational mobilities and big data credit scoring.
I have a longstanding interest in the interactions between defaulting debtor and debt collector, which was the subject of my first book Lived Economies of Default, published by Routledge in 2015. There and in other related publications, I sought to simultaneously explore the intimate dimensions of financialised life and their encounter with organisational expertise.
In doing so, I have developed an economic sociology informed by approaches from science and technology studies, speculative philosophy and non-representational theory. I am keen to build up science and technology studies as a field within Lancaster University, which I work on in my role as Director of the Centre for Science Studies, as well as a member of the Centre for Technological Futures.
I have also co-edited two books: Practising Comparison: Logics, Relations, Collaborations, published by Mattering Press in 2016, and Markets and the Arts of Attachment, published by Routledge in 2017.
PhD Supervision Interests
I am looking to supervise students interested in engaging critically with some of the following empirical areas: household economies, everyday indebtedness, AI/data proliferation/informational mobilities, disaster/disaster preparedness, infrastructures of scholarly communication. Theoretically and methodologically I draw influences from fields including science and technology studies, affect theory, economic sociology, and sociologies of the digital.
Selected Publications
Lived economies of default: consumer credit, debt collection, and the capture of affect
Deville, J. 2015 London : Routledge. 212 p. ISBN: 9780415622509.
Book
Consumer credit default and collections: the shifting ontologies of market attachment
Deville, J. 2014 In: Consumption, Markets and Culture. 17, 5, p. 468-490. 23 p.
Journal article
Debtor publics: tracking the participatory politics of consumer credit
Deville, J. 01/2016 In: Consumption, Markets and Culture. 19, 1, p. 38-55. 18 p.
Journal article
Concrete governmentality: shelters and the transformations of preparedness
Deville, J., Guggenheim, M., Hrdličková, Z. 06/2014 In: The Sociological Review. 62, Supp. S1, p. 183-210. 18 p.
Journal article
All Publications
Open Book Futures
01/05/2023 → 30/04/2026
Research
TAS-S Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node - Security
01/11/2020 → 31/10/2024
Research
TAS-S: Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Security
01/11/2020 → 31/10/2024
Research
ISF: Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs
01/11/2019 → 30/04/2023
Research
New Platforms for Open Access Book Distribution
01/04/2018 → 30/06/2018
Research
Graphic Futures
17/10/2017 → 30/06/2018
Research
Digital Technologies of Debt Resilience
03/02/2014 → 03/06/2014
Other
Organising Disaster: Civil Protection and the Population
01/01/2011 → 30/06/2015
Other
ESRC Studentship PTA-031–2006–00457
01/07/2009 → 01/07/2012
Other
Inaugural Event of the Africa Research Hub
Symposium
Towards Sustainable Open Access Book Publishing in the African Context
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Ethics and Security in Autonomous Systems for Freight Innovation
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Beyond BPCs: Towards fairer, more sustainable futures for Open Access books
Invited talk
Open Access Books: Panel Discussion
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Open Book Futures: Working together to Build Community-owned Infrastructures for OA books
Invited talk
Lessons from the dragon’s den: Ambivalent interactions at industry events
Invited talk
Open Access infrastructures and higher education futures
Invited talk
The case for open Open Access book infrastructures
Invited talk
Laying the foundations: Building systems of support for OA books
Invited talk
Conversation on the relationalities of care in Open Access Publishing
Invited talk
“Quality Assurance and Peer Review”, Critical Issues in Open Access and Scholarly Communication”
Invited talk
“The Emotional Work of Debt Collection”, Collegium Generale: Schuld und Schulden
Invited talk
“Open Access Publishing and the Future of the University”, Radical Open Access II
Invited talk
“Comparing Comparativisms: A Comparative Analysis of Practising Comparison’s Comparisons” Doing Comparison
Invited talk
‘Emergent domestic financial practices’ / ‘Building the infrastructure of domestic finance’. Sessions at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics Annual Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
“The Disaffects of Interminable Standby: Preparing for Non-disaster”, Capacious Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Data Publics: Investigating the Formation and Representation of Crowds, Groups and Clusters in Digital Economies
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
“Oikonomising Financial Economies: A Grounded Theory of Finacialization?”, The 12th Annual International Ethnography Symposium. Politics and Ethnography in an Age of Uncertainty
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
"Oh for the perfect debtor!: A rapid tour through utopias of debt collection”
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Financial Economies: Studying Finance In-between Domestication, Capture, and Governance”, New Economic Sociology and Sociology: Where Do They Meet?
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
“The Interminable Present: Preparing for Non-Disaster”, Association of American Geographers Annual Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
“Lived Economies of Default”, Depoliticization and the Political Today
Invited talk
“Tracking the Credit Trackers: The Case of Digital Payday Lending”, Department of Sociology Research Seminar
Invited talk
“Debt and the Arts of Market Attachment”, Debt: Experience and Critique
Invited talk
“Methods for Seeing the Invisible Algorithm: The Case of Digital Payday Lending”, Methods Mixtures Seminar Series
Invited talk
Open Futures: The Politics of Academic Book Publishing
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Domesticizing Financial Economies, workshop, Sciences Po
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Domesticizing Financial Economies, part 3’, mini-conference at Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics 28th Annual Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
“The Market Will Have You: The Arts of Market Attachment in a Digital Economy”, (Im)Possible Markets: 4th Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
“Nudging nudge. Or, What Might Behavioural Economists and Economisers Learn From STS?”, BSA Annual Conference 2016
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
“Domesticizing Credit and Debt: Between Market Devices and Everyday Calculation”, Debt trails: Mapping Relations of Debt and Credit from Everyday Actors to Global Credit Markets
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
“Mattering Press: Publishing With Care”, Radical Open Access
Invited talk
“Nudging Nudge. Or, What Might Behavioural Economists and Economisers Learn From STS?”, Economic Exchanges
Invited talk
“Domesticizing Credit Data: Digital Subprime and the Scraping of Online Information”, SASE 27th Annual Conference: Inequality in the 21st Century
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
“Following Capitalism’s Affects. Or, an Unlikely Encounter Between Behavioural Economics, STS and Affect Theory”, Affect: Worldings, Tensions, Futures
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Lancaster Intelligent, Robotic and Autonomous Systems Centre, LIRA - Society and Human Behaviour, Security Lancaster (Sociology)
- CeMoRe - Centre for Mobilities Research
- Centre for Technological Futures
- DSI - Society
- Security Lancaster
- Security Lancaster (Sociology)