About Dr Courtney Hagen-Ford
Courtney Hagen Ford is an Assistant Professor in Marketing at Northeastern University London, where she teaches Introduction to Marketing to first-year undergraduates. She combines real-world examples and experiences with academic theories to give students a well-rounded and robust foundation on which to further their studies.
Prior to her return to academic life, Dr Hagen Ford spent several years working in media monitoring and PR analytics. She was responsible for performing quality control checks on data for a variety of clients that included Pandora, Ericsson, Philips, and several automotive manufacturers in the Middle East. Later, she went on to study for an MA in Consumption, Culture, & Marketing at Royal Holloway University of London. She was fortunate to study with some highly regarded scholars from the world of critical marketing, which has gone on to inform her intellectual and pedagogical approach. Dr Hagen Ford received a Distinction for her dissertation on the commodification of science fiction fan culture and its impact on large-scale events.
Dr Hagen Ford’s PhD was also conducted at Royal Holloway University of London, split between Sociology and Management. Funded by a Leverhulme Trust Magna Carta Doctoral Scholarship, she examined the role that new technologies play in family life. Specifically, she examined parents’ use of family surveillance products (apps to monitor their own children), interviewing families to uncover how they managed these products’ use and integrated them into their family technoculture. Dr Hagen Ford uncovered what motivates parents to use apps like Google Family Link and Apple’s Screen Time, as well as what motivates children to either accept or reject their use.
Her academic interests are: marketing (in particular aspects related to consumers, brands, and theory), surveillance studies, and sociological inquiry.
Qualifications
PhD in Sociology (2022), Royal Holloway University of London
- Thesis title: ‘When I try to go onto MLG Peppa Pig and you said I’m not allowed’: a qualitative sociological analysis of how the use of family surveillance products shape and are shaped by parenting and childhood in the UK
MA in Consumption, Culture, & Marketing (2015), Royal Holloway University of London
- Dissertation title: Doctor Who in the Cathedral of Prosumption: how work, leisure, production, and consumption collide at science fiction conventions
Dr Courtney Hagen-Ford's Research
Selected Academic Presentations
2023:
13th Annual International Critical Management Studies conference.
- Presentation title: The relationship between family surveillance products and the everyday experiences of risk in UK families
The Datafied Family: Algorithmic Encounters in Care, Intimacies, Routine and Play event.
- Presentation title: Family surveillance products: what are they and why do they matter?
2022:
Surveillance Studies Network Conference, Rotterdam, Netherlands
- Presentation title: Family Surveillance Products – what are they and why do they matter?
2019:
European Sociological Association Conference (RN 13 stream), Manchester, UK
- Presentation title: Intimate Surveillance Gone Digital