Durham University

Graduate Student, Applied Social Sciences

PhD Candidate

Ustinov College

Thesis Title: Iconic Institutions and Audience Ownership: a comparative study of the sport and corporate sectors

About

My PhD research investigates the contemporary relationship of audiences and markets to particular iconic institutions, underpinned by a comparative study of one popular sporting institution (a football club) and one non-sporting corporation. The research explores comparatively a variety of key aspects of the institution-audience relationship, and in particular the role of key intermediaries or figureheads (in effect, celebrities) in defining the identities of both the institution and the audience/market; and, in mediating the relationships between the institution and the audience/market. It also investigates the forms of commercial and cultural crossover that occur between the sport and business sectors, for example how sport marketing officials imagine club supporters as 'consumers', and how the corporate sector seeks to build sport-type loyalties among its customer bases.

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