Les Back’s work aspires to create a sensuous or live sociology committed to searching for new modes of sociological writing and representation. This approach is outlined in his books Live methods (Back and Puwar, 2012) and The art of listening (Back, 2007). He also writes journalism and has made documentary films. Between 2006 and 2008 along with Celia Lury he coordinated the ESRC-funded Live Sociology programme which offered training in the use of multi-media in qualitative research as part of Researcher Development Initiative and in 2011–12 they set up Real Time Research network for methodological innovation.

The conversation started with a discussion of the threats and opportunities faced by the sociological imagination today.

Les: I think academic sociology faces both profound challenges and real openings. So there is an unevenness in the Republic of Sociological Letters, a combination of opening up new opportunities to imagine sociology differently and a kind of conservatism which also closes things down. There are real threats to the life of the mind, while at the same time there are unprecedented opportunities to do sociology differently. The corporatising impulse is transforming the university and it is hard not to become possessed by the metrics of auditing and measuring intellectual value and worth. There are many people who are trying to defend a space and defend each other in order to avoid committing either institutional or intellectual suicide. That seems to be really what is happening.

Katherine: I want to hear a bit more about your trajectory. How did you come to be a professor of sociology and dean of a graduate school?

Les: Well those kind of elevated titles associated with my name mean that miracles are possible. My trajectory is a very eccentric one. It is one that is certainly not something that I would recommend to anyone. I started out at Goldsmiths College in the early 1980s studying geography, actually. I hated geography, mainly because it was a dreadful department full of right-wing teachers. This is very unusual for Goldsmiths in terms of what it has become.