Hoang Viet Cuong Le

Cuong Le is a Postgraduate Researcher in Consumer Culture Studies and a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Leicester School of Business, UK, whose work sits at the intersection of the Sociology of Consumption and Consumer Culture Theory. His research critically examines how pervasive socio-temporal forces are reshaping consumers' lived experiences and practices. A central focus of his current doctoral study is the analysis of collective strategies of deceleration as a form of consumer resistance, exploring how these movements challenge the pressures of an accelerated consumer culture to foster more sustainable futures.

PhD Project: Exploring consumers’ lived experiences and social practices within alternative communities: A multi-sited ethnographic study of intentional communities in the UK.

Thesis Focus: This thesis examines how alternative communities organise everyday life through distinctive rhythms of consumption, work, and governance under conditions of late-modern social acceleration. It analyses how members coordinate shared time and socio-material infrastructures inform of collective rhythm-work to enact slower temporal logics. Conceptually, it develops ‘liquid resistance’ to capture how participants contest capitalist ideologies while navigating inevitable market entanglements. It identifies these collective degrowth strategies as forms of social action oriented toward sustainable futures, contributing to sociological debates on consumption, temporality, and collective alternatives.

Methods: Qualitative research; Multi-sited ethnography; Participant observation; In-depth interviews; Netnography; Documentary/archival analysis.

• Co-organising the ULSB Postgraduate Researcher Conference 2025 
• Co-Organising the Multidisciplinary AI Research Workshop for PGRs of College of Business and College of Science and Engineering (2025)
• College of Business Postgraduate Researcher Representative

• Graduate Teaching Assistant Studentship (awarded full funding, 4-year stipend and tuition), University of Leicester
• Dean’s Scholarship for Excellent International Students, Nottingham Trent University

• Le C., Grigore, G., Galalae, C., and Jesudoss, S.P.  (2026). Collective Rhythm-Work: Organising Slow Time in Intentional Communities. 13th EIASM Interpretive Consumer Research Workshop (15th - 17th April 2026).
• Le C. (2025). Exploring consumers’ lived experiences within resistant communities in the UK. ULSB Postgraduate Researcher Conference 2025 (10th July 2025).