Woman with Eyes Closed and White Gloves by Emergency Door: Graffiti, photographed by Alan MacWeeney. Courtesy of the NYPL.

NYLON was created in 2001 by Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett of New York University and the London School of Economics. It began as a network of young scholars within the two institutions and collaboration between them. Since September 2012, NYLON has been co-led by Eric Klinenberg and Gianpaolo Baiocchi. The group has expanded beyond its original boundaries and now includes members from Goldsmiths, Cambridge, and Kent in the UK; from Chicago, Columbia University, CUNY and the New School in the US; and the Wissenschaftszentrum and the Humboldt University in Berlin. Sophie Gonick and Caitlin Zaloom of New York University will lead NYLON during the 2023-2024 academic year, with Michelle Cera joining them as a graduate student organizer.

An account of the history of NYLON was published in the ASA’s Section on the Sociology of Culture Newsletter in Spring 2013.

NYLON researchers share a broad interest in culture and qualitative research methods; more, with ways that social processes turn into concrete cultural forms through practical activity. We are thus exploring informal, improvised social practices, as well as the bones of institutions; again, we try to integrate cultural analysis with an understanding of politics and political economy.

NYLON is supported by New York University, London School of Economics, Cambridge University, Goldsmiths College-London and the Watermill Center for the Arts and Humanities.