Andrew Cohen
Andrew graduated from Fontbonne University (St. Louis, MO) in 2011 with a dual major in Advertising and Applied Sociology. His senior thesis, a sociological account of an internship at an advertising agency, inspired his curiosity to study the culture of advertising agencies.
Andy’s dissertation uses the lens of cultural and economic sociology to investigate the production of advertising. Through over 1,000 hours of fieldwork and more than 80 interviews at four different US advertising agencies, he explores the practices and associated meanings that justify how advertising work is done, shape how consumers are studied and understood, influence whether ideas live or die, and limit who and what is considered “creative.”
Andy currently has publications in The Encyclopedia of Economics and Society (ed. Frederick Wherry, Princeton) and the Journal of Applied Social Science, as well as an article under review at Theory & Society (with co-author Shai Dromi, Harvard).