Dr. Stephen Murphy

Assistant Professor, Trinity Business School

Biography

Stephen Murphy works in the phenomenological tradition, examining the lived, embodied texture of consumer experience and the social, material, and technological forces that shape it. His research asks what consumer life feels like from the inside " how skills develop through the body, how emotions emerge from everyday rhythms, and how a sense of self is assembled and disrupted through what we do and what we do it with.

His ethnographic work spans diverse consumer contexts " craftworkers, conspiracy communities, and motorcycle enthusiasts " examining how embodied practices and technological infrastructures shape experience and social belonging. Recent projects explore craftworkers navigating the commercialisation of passionate hobbies, the resonant awakenings that draw consumers into conspiracy theory communities, and the connections between boredom, time, and digital technology use.

Stephen's research appears in leading journals including Sociology, Marketing Theory, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, and Industrial Marketing Management, with multiple papers ranking in the top 5% of research outputs globally (Altmetric). His work regularly features in major media including BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, The Irish Times, RTÉ, The Telegraph, and The Conversation.
He has received the 2025 Trinity Business School Research Impact Award, multiple Teaching Excellence Awards, and Best Paper awards at international conferences including the Consumer Culture Theory Conference and Academy of Marketing.

Stephen reviews regularly for journals including European Journal of Marketing, Marketing Theory, and Journal of Marketing Management. He serves on the editorial board of Marketing Theory, as External Examiner at University of Bath, and as Expert Reviewer for Quality and Qualifications Ireland. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority and a member of the Consumer Culture Theory Consortium and Academy of Marketing.

Prior to Trinity, Stephen was Lecturer in Marketing at University of Essex. He holds a PhD in Marketing from University of Limerick, where he received the Dr David McKevitt Scholarship.

Publications and Further Research Outputs

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Murphy, S., Patterson, M., O'Malley, L, Learning How: Body techniques and the consumption of experience, Marketing Theory , 2019Journal Article, 2019, TARA - Full Text
O'Leary, K., Murphy, S., Moving beyond Goffman: The performativity of anonymity on social networking sites, European Journal of Marketing, 2019, p83-107Journal Article, 2019, TARA - Full Text
O'Malley, L., O'Dwyer, M., McNally, R. C., and Murphy, S, Identity, collaboration and radical innovation: The role of dual organisation identification, Industrial Marketing Management, 2014, p1335-1342Journal Article, 2014, TARA - Full Text
Murphy, S. and M. Patterson, Motorcycling Edgework: A Practice Theory Perspective, Journal of Marketing Management, 2011, p1322-1340Journal Article, 2011, TARA - Full Text
O'Dwyer, M., O'Malley, L., Murphy, S., & McNally, R. C, Insights into the creation of a successful MNE innovation cluster, Competitiveness Review, 2015, p288-309Journal Article, 2015, TARA - Full Text
Murphy, S. and M Patterson, Elucidating a Theory of Practice for Consumer Research, European Advances in Consumer Research Conference, 2013Journal Article, 2013, TARA - Full Text
Murphy, S, Assembling Embodiment: Body, Techniques and Things, Advances in Consumer Research , 48, 2020, p1112 - 1117Journal Article, 2020, TARA - Full Text
Murphy, S, He's got the touch': Tracing the masculine regulation of the body schema in reciprocal relations between 'self-others-things', Marketing Theory , 1, 2022, p21 - 40Journal Article, 2022, URL , TARA - Full Text
Cirella, S. & Murphy, S., Exploring intermediary practices of collaboration in university- industry innovation: A practice theory approach, Creativity and Innovation Management , 2022, p1 - 18Journal Article, 2022, DOI , URL , TARA - Full Text
Stephen Murphy, Tim Hill, Pierre McDonagh, Amanda Flaherty, Mundane emotions: Losing yourself in boredom, time and technology, Marketing Theory, 2023Journal Article, 2023, DOI , TARA - Full Text
Hill, T., Murphy, S., Canniford., Communities of Stigmatized Knowledge: Social Exclusion, Political Sovereignty, and Globalized Capitalism, Advances in Consumer Research Conference,, Paris, 1 - 4 October, Vol 48, 2020, pp1198-Conference Paper, 2020
O'Leary, K., Murphy, S., Online Gambling during/after Covid, Academy of Marketing 2022 Annual Conference, Huddersfield., 5-7 July, edited by S. Roper & C. McCamley , 2021Conference Paper, 2021
Murphy, S., Hill, T.,, `Training the Senses to Succeed in Craft', Consumer Culture Theory Conference, Lund, 27 - 30 June, 2023Poster, 2023
The roar of the crowd: How fans create electric atmospheres. in, editor(s)Mike Duignan , Events and Society: Bridging Theory and Practice, London, Routledge, 2025, pp115 - 212, [Hill, T., Canniford, R., Eckhardt, G., & Murphy, S.]Book Chapter, 2025
Tim Hill, Stephen T. Murphy, Robin Canniford, Resonant Awakenings: The Social Lives of Conspiracy Theorists, Sociology, 60, (1), 2026, p135 - 155, p135-155Journal Article, 2026, DOI , TARA - Full Text
Robin Canniford, Tim Hill, Stephen T. Murphy, Why people embrace conspiracy theories: it"s about community, not gullibility, 2025Journal Article, 2025, DOI
Stephen T. Murphy, `He"s got the touch": Tracing the masculine regulation of the body schema in reciprocal relations between `self-others-things", Marketing Theory, 22, (1), 2021, p21 - 40, p21-40Journal Article, 2021, DOI

Research Expertise

I work in the phenomenological tradition, examining the lived, embodied texture of consumer experience and the social, material, and technological forces that shape it.

Drawing primarily on Merleau-Ponty, my research asks what consumer life feels like from the inside " how skills are developed in and through the body, how emotions emerge from the rhythms of everyday experience, and how a sense of self is assembled and disrupted through what we do and what we do it with. A consistent concern across my work is how those lived experiences are structured by broader forces: markets, technologies, gender arrangements, and social exclusion.

My current projects examine craftworkers navigating the commercialisation of passionate hobbies, serious leisure practitioners whose communities have migrated onto digital platforms, and consumers whose experience of time and attention is reshaped by digital device use. Earlier work examined high-speed motorcycling, body techniques in craft consumption, boredom and temporality, and the resonant awakenings that draw consumers into conspiracy theory communities.

What connects these seemingly disparate projects is a consistent method and set of questions: drawing on phenomenology to ask what each of these experiences feels like from the inside, and what social, material, and technological forces structure that felt experience.

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students whose interests connect to phenomenology, embodiment, consumer experience, or the politics of everyday life. The strongest applications come from students who have identified a specific question they want to pursue and can explain why existing frameworks cannot answer it.

Title

'Do Your Own Research': How and when conspiracy theories resonate

Summary

How and when do people become conspiracy theorists? Answers to this question vary by discipline and include explanations made at both individual and societal levels of analysis. Recently, the concept of 'resonance' has been put forward as a means to unite these levels of analysis. Resonance describes how individuals can experience conspiracy theories as 'awakening moments', particularly when these alternative claims to truth enable social groups to handle social problems and grievances. To date, however, studies have not explained the processes and contextual conditions by which experiences of resonance occur. Drawing on data from an extended ethnographic study of the British 'truth seeker' movement, this study examines the specific contexts in which persons, situations and cultural objects combine to create resonance. We show that people's initial receptivity to conspiracy theories is primed by moral emotions, which include feelings of indignations, contempt and resentment. Next, we demonstrate how 'awakenings' are sparked by interactive situations where people work together to solve shared problems. Finally, we explain how the participatory qualities of conspiracy theories sustain lasting transformation in worldviews. This research shows that in the myriad of activities involved in 'doing your own research' the truth seeker subjectivity is created and maintained.

Date From

2018
Title

"Making something from nothing": Phenomenological insights into handling craftwork from home

Summary

How are craftworkers lives influenced by the demands and expectations of working from home? And how are craft workers' identities enacted to demonstrate an ability to cope with these additional home-based demands? This study brings a phenomenological perspective on home and situated experience to bear on a combination of ethnographic material and interview data collected over a three-year period with female craftworkers in Ireland and the UK. This research shows that while craftwork presents consumers with opportunities to pursue creative work, doing so from the home, also means coping with additional risks, responsibilities, and expectations. In contributing to the growing interest in the contemporary craft revival, this research shows that where craft happens matters to how it is experienced, and that the pursuit of craftwork is compelled and constrained by a range of social, cultural, and economic demands.

Funding Agency

Dublin City Council

Date From

2021
Title

Mundane Emotions: Losing Yourself in Boredom, Time, and Technology

Summary

Much marketing and consumer research has drawn attention to the positive and joyful emotional feature of consumer tribes. However, research has little to say on boredom, an emotional state prevalent in consumers' lives that was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic due to lockdown restrictions. Informed by Heidegger's understanding of boredom as a fundamental mood tied to temporality, this research uses semi-structured interviews to identify two kinds of boredom - superficial and profound boredom - and their specific temporal dynamics. Superficial boredom is common, and refers to a situational restlessness in which people desire distractions. In contrast, profound boredom refers to an existential discomfort in which people struggle with a sense of self, but ultimately can result in authentic self-disclosure. We explain superficial boredom as a symptom of a dominant capitalist temporal regime that comprise connectivity and acceleration. Together these temporal logics fragment and compress time in ways that encourage mundane social media consumption that simply fills time. We also explain how profound boredom stems from an abundance of uninterrupted time spent in relative solitude. We highlight two paradoxes. On the one hand, social media consumption exploits superficial boredom and at the same time suppresses the time and opportunity for its overcoming. On the other hand, it is the depths of distress within profound boredom that reveals possibilities for authentic self-disclosure. In providing a theory of boredom, our research contributes to consumer research's understanding of mundane emotions, and the organisation of time in contemporary consumer society.

Date From

2021

Economics and Business Administration,

Recognition

Trinity Business School Research Impact Award 2025 2025
Trinity Business School Excellence in Teaching Award 2021 2021
TBS Excellence in Teaching Award 2025
Trinity Business School Excellence in Teaching Award 2024 2024
Best Paper in Track - Academy of Marketing Annual Conference Limerick 2017
Trinity Business School Excellence in Teaching Award 2023 2023
Trinity Business School Performance Excellence Award 2022 2022
Top cited article for 2023 (Wiley) 2023
Essex University Student Choice Award for "Innovative Teaching" 2017
Best Paper in Track - Academy of Marketing Annual Conference, Liverpool 2011
Best Conference Paper - Consumer Culture Theory Conference Montreal 2019

Consumer Culture Theory Consortium
Fellowship of The Higher Education Academy
Academy of Marketing

External Examiner University of Bath 2021
External Research Supervisor University of Essex 2020
Reviewer for Marketing Theory 2019
Expert Reviewer for Marketing Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) conducting a review of accreditation application for Dublin Business School's MSc Marketing Programme. 20024
Editorial Board Member Marketing Theory
Reviewer for Consumer Culture Theory Conference 2023
Reviewer for Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana 2024