Timothy A. Simpson

Associate Professor

Administrative Roles

• Founding Head of Department of Communication (2004-2008)

Academic Qualifications

• BA (Auburn University)
• MA (University of Arkansas)
• Ph.D. (University of South Florida)

Current Research Areas

My research interests focus on Asian cities; consumer architectures and environments; Chinese tourism and consumption practices; material and immaterial forms of gambling; and ethnographic approaches to everyday life.

Research Fellowships

• POLITÉCNICO DE LISBOA, PORTUGAL. Erasmus International Staff Mobility, June 5-9, 2023
• UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS. Eadington Fellowship, Center for Gaming Research, June 11 – July 6, 2018.
• PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN, THE NEW SCHOOL, NEW YORK. Visiting Scholar, School of Design Strategies, August – December 2017.
• NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE. Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Asia Research Institute(Asian Urbanisms Cluster), October –December 2011.
• CITY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Sociology. Funded by an Erasmus Mundus Mobilities Fellowship (MULTI—Multilingualism and Multiculturalism: Linguistic Approaches to Transition and Identity). June 2011 and June 2013.

Media

• Book Launch Presentation (2023) – summary of my book ‘Betting on Macau’
• UM News (2023) – campus bio of my Macau teaching and research
• New Books Network podcast (2023) – discussion of my new book, “Betting on Macau.”
• Rhetoric Warriors Podcast (2021) – my research and teaching in Macau
• UNLV Gaming Podcast (2018) – my Eadington Fellow lecture about Macau’s casino wars 
• University of Alberta Lecture (2018) – LIVE Baccarat Calculations
• Video Abstract (2013) – introduction to my article in Theory, Culture & Society about Macau’s glass architecture. [English]

Selected Publications

Books

• Tim Simpson (2023). Betting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China’s Consumer Revolution. University of Minnesota Press.
• T. Simpson, Ed. (2017). Tourist Utopias: Offshore Islands, Enclave Spaces, and Mobile Imaginaries. Amsterdam University Press.
• Roger Palmer and Tim Simpson (2015).  Macao Macau. London: Black Dog Publishing.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• D. Zuev and T. Simpson (2023). Affective atmospheres in Macau: From the sublime to the uncanny. Visual Studies. (AHCI)
• S. Kuo, L. Zhang, K.M Chang, and T. Simpson (2023) Exploring the victim-offender overlap in intimate partner violence among Chinese men and women living in rural China. Journal of Family Violence. (SSCI Q1)
• T. Simpson (2023) Comment: ‘Radical Ontology’, in Current Anthropology 64(3): 280-281.
• F. Liang and T. Simpson (2022). Decoding Chinese Millennials: The Culture of Singles in the Post-Mao Era. Southern Communication Journal, 1-14. (ESCI; SCOPUS, Q2 ‘Communication’)
• T. Simpson (2021). Macao’s post-Mao grand tour: China’s gamble on urbanization in the Venetian Macao Resort. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 1-21. (SSCI, Q4 ‘Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism’)
• T. Simpson. (2021). Cognac and the comportment of the quality Chinese consumer. Cultural Geographies, 28(2), 393–401. (SSCI, Q2 ‘Geography’)
• L. Zhang, S. Y. Kuo, & T. Simpson (2021). Trapped and Resistant Body: Everyday Practices of Women in Taiwan in the Context of Intimate Partner Violence. Journal of Family Violence, 36(6), 657-668. (SSCI, Q2 ‘Family Studies’)
• T. Simpson. (2021). “Interiorized urbanism in Macau: Model City for Post-Mao China.” The Emerging Public Realm of the Greater Bay Area:  Approaches to Public Space in a Chinese Megaregion, ed. M. Mitrasinovic and T. Jachna. Routledge.
• Simpson (2019) “The Velvet Rope and the Chinese Consumer: A Science of the Queue Apparatus.” Applied Mobilities.
• Simpson (2019) “LIVE Baccarat Calculations: Macau Machine Gaming and the Production of the Post-Socialist Subject”. Journal of Cultural Economy 12(6): 521-538. (SSCI, Q1 ‘Cultural Studies’)
• Simpson (2019) “From Casino Wars to Casino Capitalism: Sovereignty and Gaming in Macau.” UNLV Center for Gaming Research Occasional Paper Series, 46.
• T. Simpson (2019) “Macau’s Materialist Milieu: Portuguese Pavement Stones and the Political Economy of the Chinese Urban Imaginary,” Companion to Urban Imaginaries, Ed. Christoph Linder and Miriam Meissner. Routledge.
• Simpson (2019) “The Persistence and Significance of Small Urban Spaces in China,” China Review International 24(3): 169-176.
• T. Simpson (2018) “Neoliberal exceptions? The liberalization of Macau’s casino gaming monopoly and the genealogy of the post-socialist Chinese subject”. Planning Theory. 17(1): 74-95. (SSCI, Q2 ‘Regional and Urban Planning’)
• T. Simpson (2018) “Spectacular Architecture at the Frontiers of Global Capitalism,” Macao and the Casino Complex, Ed. Stefan Al. Reno: University of Nevada Press.
• T. Simpson (2018) Comment: “Pavement Pedagogy”, Current Anthropology. 59(4):392-393. (SSCI, Q1 ‘Anthropology’)
• T. Simpson (2017) “Mapping Tourist Utopias,” Tourist Utopias: Offshore Islands, Enclave Spaces, and Mobile Imaginaries,” Ed. Tim Simpson. University of Amsterdam Press.
• T. Simpson (2017) “After Utopia: Post-Colonial Macau and Post-Socialist Chinese Tourists,” Tourist Utopias: Offshore Islands, Enclave Spaces, and Mobile Imaginaries,” Ed. Tim Simpson. University of Amsterdam Press.
• T. Simpson (2016) “Tourist Utopias: Biopolitics and the Genealogy of the Post-World City,”. Current Issues in Tourism 19(1): 27-59. (SSCI, Q1 ‘Hospitality, Leisure, Sport, and Tourism’)
• T. Simpson (2016) “Spatial Machines of Subjection: A Materialist Analysis of Macau’s Themed Integrated Casino Resorts”, A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces Ed. Scott A. Lukas. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University – ETC Press.  FREE BOOK DOWNLOAD
• T. Simpson (2014) “Macau Metropolis and Mental Life: Interior Urbanism and the Chinese Imaginary”,International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 38(3): 824-832. (SSCI, Q1 ‘Urban Studies’)
• T. Simpson (2013) “Scintillant Cities: Glass Architecture, Finance Capital, and the Fictions of Macau’s Enclave Urbanism,” Theory, Culture & Society. 30(7-8): 343-371. (SSCI, Q1 ‘Cultural Studies’)  VIDEO ABSTRACT
• T. Simpson (2013) “Chinese Tourists, Themed Casinos, and Consumer Pedagogy in Macau,” The Communicative City and Urban Communication in the 21st Century: Urban Communication Reader 3, Ed. S. Drucker, V. Gallagher, M. Matsanakis (Peter Lang).
• T. Simpson (2013) “The Ongoing Story of Macau,” International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter: 21-23.
• T. Simpson (2012) “Tourist Utopias: Las Vegas, Dubai, Macau,” Working Paper Series, no. 177, Asia Research Institute , National University of Singapore.
• T. Simpson (2011) “Macao Noir: Criminal Brotherhoods, Casino Capitalism, and the Case of the Post-Socialist Chinese Consumer,” Fast Capitalism 8(1). Special issue on “Global Noir,” ed. By Gray Kochharr-Lindgren (With photographs by Adam Lampton).
• T. Simpson (2011) “’Neoliberalism with Chinese Characteristics’: Consumer Pedagogy in Macao,” Cities and Fascination: Beyond the Surplus of Meaning, Ed. H. Schmid, W. Sahr, J. Urry (Ashgate).
• T. Simpson (2010) “Lazarus, the Dead Mall, and the Demise of the City Center,” Urban Communication Reader II, Ed. H. Jassem, S. Drucker, G. Burd, Hampton Press.
• T. Simpson (2009) “Materialist Pedagogy: The Function of Themed Environments in Post-Socialist Consumption in Macau,” Tourist Studies 9(1): 60-80. (SSCI, Q4 ‘Hospitality, Leisure, Sport, and Tourism’)
• T. Simpson (2009) “Macau’s Mediterranean Motifs,” World Architecture 12: 104-111.(Published in both English and Chinese; Chinese translation by Xiang Linfei).
• T. Simpson, T. Chung, H. Tieben (2009) “A Conversation on Casino Architecture in Las Vegas and Macao.” World Architecture 12: 86-91. (Roundtable discussion also including N. Niglio and B. Lam. Published in both English and Chinese).
• T. Simpson (2008) “Macao, Capital of the Twenty-First Century?” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26: 1053-1079. (With photographs by Adam Lampton). (SSCI, Q1 ‘Geography’)
• T. Simpson (2008), “The Commercialization of Macau’s Cafes.” Ethnography 9(2): 225 – 262. (SSCI, Q3 ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Sociology’)
• T. Simpson (2008) “The Proximal Other: Globalization and the Itinerant Subject of Intercultural Communication Research.” International and Intercultural Communication Annual 31. Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World, Ed. L. A. Flores, B. J. Allen, M. P. Orbe, Sage: 1 – 31.
• Wu M. and T. Simpson (2007) “Media and Culture,” Mass Communication (Series on Western Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences), Ed. Shuming Lu and Junhao Hong, Beijing: China Remnin University Press: 84 – 132. (Published in Chinese).
• T. A. Simpson (2001) “Themed Environments, Suburbs, and the Middle Class in Bangkok,” Etnofoor 14(1), pp. 7-30.
• M. Neumann and T. A. Simpson (2001) “Notes from the Underground: Pirate Recording and Popular Music,” Consommations et Societes 1: 39-46.
• T. A. Simpson (2000) “Streets, Sidewalks, Stores, and Stories: Narrative and the Uses of Urban Space,”Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29(6): 682-716. (SSCI, Q3 ‘Sociology’)
• T. A. Simpson (1999) “Recycling Urban Spaces,” Western Journal of Communication 63: 310-328. (ESCI; SCOPUS, Q2 ‘Communication’)
• M. Neumann and T. A. Simpson (1997) “Smuggled Sound: Bootleg Recording and the Pursuit of Popular Memory,” Symbolic Interaction 20: 319-342. (SSCI, Q2 ‘Sociology’)
• T. A. Simpson (1996) “Constructions of Self and Other in the Experience of Rap Music,” Constructing the Self in a Mediated World ed. Debra Grodin and Thomas R. Lindlof, Sage: 107-123.
• T. A. Simpson (1995) “Communication, Conflict, and Community in an Urban Industrial Ruin,”Communication Research 22: 700-719. (SSCI, Q1 ‘Communication’)

Graduate Supervision (PhD)

• Shao Pei (reconstructing tropicality: tropical travel and migration in the digital age)
• Guo Minling (antiques, nostalgia, spatial consumption, materiality)
• Mai Shuting (urban theory, public space, women leisure)
• Elisabela Larrea (Macanese creole Patua theater) – graduated 2021
• Kim H. Johnson (Macau’s Lusophone community)- graduated 2020
• Vanessa Amaro (Portuguese in post-colonial Macau) – graduated 2016

Current Funded Research Projects

• Aesthetic Entrepreneurialism and Urban Neighborhood Development in Macau. Funded by a grant from UM Research Committee, 2023-2024.

Courses

• Introduction to Culture and Communication  (UG)
• Macao Media and Culture (UG)
• ‘Global Citizenship’ module for Developing Leadership (UG) – UM Honor’s College
• Theories of Mass Communication (MA)
• International and Intercultural Communication (MA)
• Academic writing and Research (MA)
• Communcition and Social Change (MA)
• Social Theory (PhD)
• Ethnography and the City (PhD)
• Qualitative Methods (PhD)