Dr Joe Smith

I’m Dr Joseph Andrew Smith, Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Leicester. My main research focus is on the users of media, on how people engage with culture and the ways in which subject-text relationships inform constructions of identity. I have a special interest in fans and fandom, particularly older and long-term fans. I have worked mostly with sports and politics fans in my research, which can be broadly defined as belonging to the fields of communications, cultural and media studies, as well as cultural gerontology. I teach across a range of journalism and media modules, and am a former media industry professional, having worked in the sports media industry.

Research

Smith, J.A. (2024). “Reconstructive Nostalgia in Later Life Fandom”, Journal of Fandom Studies, 12:1, pp19-36 (link).

Sandvoss, C., Litherland, B. & Smith, J.A. (2024). “What Corbyn support reveals about how Starmer’s Labour won big”, UK Election Analysis 2024:
Media, Voters and the Campaign, p131. (link)

Smith, J. A. (2022). Sports Fandom in Later Life: The Everyday, Nostalgia and Home. Doctoral thesis. University of Huddersfield (link)

Smith, J. A. (2019). “Destabilisation, adaptation and the long-term fan object: The search for continuity in later-life sports fandom”, Journal of Fandom Studies [Special Issue], 7:2, pp169-188, doi 10.1386/jfs.7.2.169_1 (link)

Other publications

Smith, J. A. (2021). “Sports Journalism: The State of Play (2020) by Tom Bradshaw and Daragh Minogue” [Book review], Journalism Education, 10(2), pp51-52. (link)