NYLON

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

Organizers

• Sophie Gonick Senior Fellow & Organizer of the NYLON Working Group

• Caitlin Zaloom Senior Fellow & Organizer of the NYLON Working Group

• Natasha Schüll Senior Fellow & Organizer of the NYLON Working Group

The NYLON working group is a space for intellectual exchange and critical feedback where new insights and theory can be developed, and where early-career researchers can refine their questions and approaches in the area of Culture, Politics, and Technology. The group brings together doctoral candidates and post-doctoral fellows advancing work related to this expansive theme. Participants share a broad interest in culture and qualitative research methods, and with the ways that social processes turn into concrete cultural forms through practical activity. We strive to integrate cultural analysis with an understanding of politics and political economy.

Caitlin Zaloom (SCA) and Natasha Schüll (MCC) of New York University will lead NYLON during the 2025-2026 academic year, with Jeffrey Rubel and Rosalie Uggla serving as graduate student organizers. 

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. Starting September 2012, Eric Klinenberg and Gianpaolo Baiocchi co-led NYLON. The group expanded beyond its original boundaries to include members from Goldsmiths, Cambridge, and Kent in the UK; from Chicago, Columbia University, CUNY, and the New School in the US. An account of the history of NYLON was published in the ASA’s Section on the Sociology of Culture Newsletter in Spring 2013.

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.