Mike Savage studied history at York University, and wrote a thesis on the Labour movement in the early 20th century at Lancaster University in the early 1980s. He has published extensively in sociology, history and geography. His research interests focus on how the dramatic economic restructuring of the past three decades have changed the nature of class divisions in Britain. He argues that rather than class differences declining in recent years, we are actually experiencing growing class inequality. However, the decline of manufacturing industry and the manual skills associated with these have led to the stigmatisation of the male working classes, with the result that more privileged middle class groups now dominate our political and cultural values. He has developed these themes in ‘Class Analysis and Social Transformation’ (2000), and in ‘Globalisation and Belonging’ (Savage, Bagnall and Longhurst, 2005).