I am a sociology PhD candidate studying digital and legacy media, racism, politics, and theory. My three-article dissertation considers what a trio of theorists—Stuart Hall, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Pierre Bourdieu—would make of the 1619 Project, an effort by The New York Times to center slavery in the American narrative. Drawing on Hall, I parse how Fox News sparked a moral panic that attacked the Project and how this panic evolved into the subsequent attack on 'critical race theory.' My analysis of Fox News was published by Social Problems in 2024. Thinking with Bourdieu, I trace how the digital transformation of the journalistic field created the conditions of possibility for such a convention-defying work of journalism. An article that expands on this essay was published by Social Problems in 2023. My final essay stages a dialogue between the Project’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Du Bois, who is frequently invoked across the Project. While Hannah-Jones develops a case for reparations by employing arguments Du Bois advanced throughout his life, Du Bois sharply opposed such a measure in 1916. My essay probes this surprising opposition by exploring how Du Bois's theorizing of racism and social change motivated an alternative political program.

Prior to my dissertation, I conducted a 16-month ethnography of right-wing activists advocating for a 51st state along the rural Oregon-California border. In a 2020 article published by Qualitative Sociology, I explain how the activists' state-building project coexists with their promotion of anti-government conspiracy theories. Beyond my work on politics and race, in an award-winning essay published by Sociological Theory I explore how biomedical research on chronic pain can help re-theorize the concept of habitus. In the Journal of Right-Wing Studies I survey Hall's career to formalize what I term his political sociology, a theoretical perspective I argue should be central to studying reactionary politics in the US.

My research is complemented by a commitment to teaching, mentoring, and critically engaging curriculum practices. Across nine semesters of instruction, I have taught introduction to sociology, theory, two senior seminars I designed and led as the sole instructor, and a graduate student seminar on pedagogy. In 2020 and 2023, I co-designed and taught an Art of Writing seminar with Prof. Kim Voss focused on communicating social scientific research to the public. Outside of the classroom, I have mentored undergraduates through department and campus programs and spent three years as a Sociology Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Curriculum Fellow. With other fellows, I analyzed eight years of undergraduate assignments to understand how the department's teaching practices align with its values and goals.

Prior to Berkeley, I worked at a daily newspaper in Oregon, where my reporting focused on political tensions in a former mill town experiencing rapid tourism-driven growth. I also covered the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge and debates over the implementation of marijuana legalization. A work of public sociology drawing on my journalism career was published by the Berkeley Journal of Sociology in 2022.

Publications

Leeds, Tyler. 2024. "The Influencer-Intellectual Tactic and Social Media Advertisements: How PragerU Advances Partisan Knowledge." New Media & Society.

Leeds, Tyler. 2024. “The 1619 Project Moral Panic: The Role of Cable News.” Social Problems.

Leeds, Tyler. 2024. "Stuart Hall's Relational Political Sociology: A Heuristic for Right-Wing Studies." Journal of Right-Wing Studies 2(1): 98-126.

Leeds, Tyler. 2024. "The Bio-Habitus: Using Pain Science to Reconstruct Bourdieusian Theory." Sociological Theory 42(1): 49-72.

* Herbert Blumer Prize Winner, UC Berkeley Sociology, 2024
* ASA Biosociology Section Graduate Student Paper Award Co-Winner, 2024
* ASA Body & Embodiment Section Graduate Student Paper Award Honorable Mention, 2024

Leeds, Tyler. 2023. “The Journalistic Field in the Platform Economy: The New York Times and the Inverted Pyramid.” Social Problems 70(3): 849-867.

Leeds, Tyler. 2020. “The State Schema: Seeing Politics through Morality and Capacity.” Qualitative Sociology 43: 543-564.

Public Sociology

Leeds, Tyler. 2022. “The Unthinkable Path Forward for American Journalism.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 63: 56-63.