Somewhere in the middle of David Gauntlett’s career, you come to the realization that the man has been doing something genuinely out of the ordinary. writing about more than just creativity. Actually practicing it — in places that academic culture tends to quietly discourage.
Gauntlett is a British sociologist and media theorist who currently works at Toronto Metropolitan University. Over the course of about thirty years, he has developed what could be called a portable version of media theory. His trading cards have recently found their way into American high school classrooms, condensing the ideas of philosophers such as Michel Foucault into collectible, almost playful formats. Apparently, parents have questions. That is most likely a positive indication.
It’s difficult to ignore how much of Gauntlett’s reputation is based on a single, unwavering intuition: ideas must be created, not merely written. His 2011 book Making is Connecting, which argued that the transition from a sit-back-and-be-told culture to a making-and-doing culture wasn’t just a technology story, became something of a quiet manifesto for that viewpoint. It was more humane and older. Gauntlett insisted that knitting, YouTube videos, do-it-yourself projects, and Lego constructions all belong in the same discussion. It was not persuasive to some scholars. It was revelatory for many students.
It’s worth stopping to look at the Lego work. In previous studies, Gauntlett asked participants to use Lego bricks to construct symbolic representations of their own identities, then evaluate the results. On paper, it sounds a little odd. In actuality, it seems to have yielded insights that simple interviews failed to. A different kind of honesty appears to be unlocked by the physical act of making, which includes selecting, organizing, and adjusting. It’s safe to say that there is ongoing debate over whether it is scientifically rigorous in the conventional sense.
Gauntlett’s impact on media studies education is no longer much of a topic of discussion. His critique of media effects research, which was first published in 1995 when he was still relatively unknown, caused real controversy at the time. His research is a mandatory part of the AS and A Level Media Studies curriculum in UK schools. Now that I’m reading it, it seems almost obvious. However, things that are obvious seem to require someone to say them first.
Gauntlett has been advocating for practice-based research since the mid-2010s, and the more recent work adopts this methodological approach. His book, Fundamentals of Practice-Based Research and Research-Creation, published in 2026, is accessible as a free PDF. This is a pragmatic move from someone who has long been dubious of academic gatekeeping. The book makes the case that rather than merely studying creative practice from a distance, research can and ought to be integrated into it. He uses his own music, which he releases under the name Sculpture Projects on his independent label Unfolding Records, to explore this.
A tenured professor operating a record label is a bit out of the ordinary. Gauntlett appears to know that. However, the music is actually connected to his research questions and isn’t just a pastime disguised as scholarship. When does creating music turn into research-creation? That’s exactly what he asked in a video. The point is probably that the answer is still somewhat ambiguous.
Gauntlett is reportedly writing a book about what artists and creators can actually do in the face of Big Tech and increasing automation, since AI is changing creative work in ways that no one has yet fully figured out. It’s a topic that easily leads to pessimism. He’ll probably find an excuse to be more nuanced about it than that given his past behavior.
