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Dr Torsten Geelan

Dr Torsten Geelan

Visiting Fellow

Department of Media and Communications

Email
T.K.Geelan@lse.ac.uk
Connect with me

Twitter

Website

Languages
Danish, English, Italian
Key Expertise
Labour movements, Media power

About me

Dr. Torsten Geelan is a sociologist interested in trade union movements, media counter-power, and just transitions to sustainable economies and societies. His research is comparative and interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from industrial relations, environmental sociology, environmental labour studies, critical social theory, and media and communication studies. Prior to joining the University of Bristol, he worked as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Sociology, and as a Lecturer in Sociology of Work and Employment at the University of Leicester Business School. He holds an MPhil and PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge and a BA in Economics and Social Studies from the University of Manchester.

Torsten’s EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie project Eco-Unions (2021-2024) explores how the trade union movement is navigating the so-called ‘jobs versus environment’ dilemma. The project focuses on two new labor-environmental coalitions in Denmark and the UK, and analyses the environmental discourses being produced and circulated across the interconnected arenas of union strategizing, climate policy-making and public debate. He’s particularly interested in understanding whether these discourses are able to challenge the dominance and pervasiveness of capitalist realism. During the project, he held a position as a Visiting Fellow at the LSE’s world-leading Department of Media and Communications in London. In the run-up to Eco-Unions, he led a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant on the role of Twitter in organising the 2018-2020 UK higher education strike.

He is currently co-founder and co-chair of the Alternatives to Capitalism Research Network at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) and co-editor of the Bristol University Press book series Alternatives to Capitalism in the 21stCentury. He also co-edited the Palgrave Macmillan volume From Financial Crisis to Social Change: Towards Alternative Horizons (2018; 2020 paperback) and has worked as a columnist for the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information. 

As a public speaker, Torsten is regularly invited to give talks to research centres, NGOs such as Rethinking Economics, and the trade union movement in England and Denmark. 

Expertise Details

Labour movements; Media power; Just transitions; Alternatives to capitalism

Publications

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Geelan, T. (2022) ‘The Combustible Mix of Coalitional and Discursive Power: British Trade Unions and the Case of the People’s Assembly Against Austerity’, New Technology, Work and Employment, 37 (2): 161-184. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12236 

Geelan, T. (2021) ‘Introduction to the Special Issue: The Internet, Social Media and Trade Union Revitalization: Still Behind the Digital Curve or Catching up?’ New Technology, Work and Employment, 36 (2): 123-139. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12205 

Wright, C., Wood, A., Trevor, J., McLaughlin, C., Huang, Wei., Harney, B., Geelan, T., Colfer, B., Chang, C., and Brown, W. (2018) ‘Towards a New Web of Rules: An International Review of Institutional Experimentation to Strengthen Employment Protections’, Employee Relations, 41 (2): 313-330. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-10-2018-0259 

Geelan, T. and Hodder, A. (2017) ‘Enhancing Transnational Labour Solidarity: The Unfulfilled Promise of the Internet and Social Media’, Industrial Relations Journal, 48 (4), 345-364. https://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12190 

Geelan, T., Skovrind, M., and Øland Ribe, M. (2017) ‘Akademikerprekariatet’, Dansk Sociologi, 28 (2): 27-51. https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/dansksociologi/article/view/5613 

Geelan, T. (2013) ‘Responses of Trade Union Confederations to the Youth Employment Crisis’, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 19 (3): 399-413. https://doi.org/10.1177/1024258913493702 

Book chapters and other peer-reviewed contributions 

Geelan T. (2022) ‘Danish Trade Unions and Young People: Using Media in the Battle for Hearts and Minds’ in Barry Colfer (ed.) European Trade Unions in the 21st Century, London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 209-232. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88285-3  

Geelan, T. and Hodder, A. (2021) ‘The Trials and Tribulations of Social Media and Transnational Labour Solidarity’ in A. Karatzogianni et al. (eds.) Media Technologies and Protest Revolutions: The Long Durée, Bingley: Emerald, 211-226.   

Geelan, T. Walsh, P., and Gonzalez, M. ‘Introduction’ in Geelan et. al (eds.) From Financial Crisis to Social Change: Towards Alternative Horizons, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70600-9 

Geelan, T. Walsh, P., and Gonzalez, M. ‘Afterword’ in Geelan et al (eds.) From Financial Crisis to Social Change: Towards Alternative Horizons, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 233-243. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70600-9.  

Geelan, T. Walsh, P., and Gonzalez, M. (eds.) (2018, 2020 paperback) From Financial Crisis to Social Change: Towards Alternative Horizons, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70600-9.  

Geelan, T. (2016) ‘Book Review: Worker Resistance and Media: Challenging Global Corporate Power in the 21st Century, by Lina Dencik and Peter Wilkin. Peter Lang, New York, 2015, 260 pp., ISBN 9781433124990, £98.00, hardback’, British Journal of Industrial Relations 54 (1): 239-240. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12178  

Geelan, T. (2015) ‘Danish Trade Unions and Young People: Using Media in the Battle for Hearts and Minds’ in Hodder, A. and Kretsos, L. (eds.) Trade Unions and Young People: A Global View, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 71-89. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137429537

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