James Cronin joined the Department of Marketing at Lancaster University Management School in January 2013 as a Lecturer in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour.

His principal research interests are in the sociological aspects of consumer behaviour health and wellbeing. He has written extensively on food-related behaviours and how they intersect with consumers' identities and socio-cultural communities of interest. He is also interested in issues that pertain to consumers' engagement with social media and the formation of online and virtual communities.

Cronin's recent research has explored how tropes from science fiction might be borrowed by social change agents to compellingly communicate abstract threats such as consumption-related health risks.