Professor Tim Butler
Print version
Contact details
Biography
Tim Butler graduated from the University of Essex in 1971 in Sociology and returned there later to gain an MA in Social History with a dissertation on working class nutrition in London at the end of the nineteenth century. He undertook research for his PhD at the Open University during the late 1980s on the gentrification of Hackney identifying a section of the ‘new’ middle class who appeared to make a positive choice to live in what was one of the more deprived areas of London rather than because they simply could not afford to live in posher areas. This work on the middle classes and the choices they make about where to live has continued to be his main interest of work.
More recently this has encompassed the area of education and how they choose schools and the ways they see these strategies through. He has had two large grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to investigate these research questions, the most recent of which is being undertaken with Chris Hamnett in the Department on the issues of education, ethnicity and gentrification in East London, an area until recently that has not been favoured by the middle classes.
He was previously Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of East London and he is currently Head of Geography at King’s. In addition to journal articles, he has authored two books on the gentrification of London and most recently one on social inequality. He has edited two collections on the regeneration of East London and also (with Mike Savage) a collection on the middle classes. He chaired the editorial board of the journal Sociology from 2001-04. In 2005 he was invited to Sciences Po as a visiting professor.
More recently this has encompassed the area of education and how they choose schools and the ways they see these strategies through. He has had two large grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to investigate these research questions, the most recent of which is being undertaken with Chris Hamnett in the Department on the issues of education, ethnicity and gentrification in East London, an area until recently that has not been favoured by the middle classes.
He was previously Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of East London and he is currently Head of Geography at King’s. In addition to journal articles, he has authored two books on the gentrification of London and most recently one on social inequality. He has edited two collections on the regeneration of East London and also (with Mike Savage) a collection on the middle classes. He chaired the editorial board of the journal Sociology from 2001-04. In 2005 he was invited to Sciences Po as a visiting professor.
