I am Senior Lecturer in English in the department. I specialise in the area of popular musical and subcultural studies and critical theory. My research considers countercultural legacies in Britain. How were they bound up with the political shifts of their eras? What is the significance of their aesthetic strategies? What can we learn from the ways they were produced and received? How did factors like class and education play a part? And whose interests are served by the ways that countercultures get represented, remembered and reworked - in literature, film, TV, marketing and other cultural forms? These questions inform my monograph Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). They also guide my current research project and second monograph in progress, Days of The Underground, on how the legacies of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture inform contemporary culture and politics. The project establishes historical connections between the counterculture and a range of present-day concerns including work and technology; the climate crisis; and mental health, as well as urban policy and tensions of national belonging.

In turn, this feeds into my teaching on undergraduate modules such as Cultures of Resistance (which I lead) and Cultures of Life and Death, as well as the MA module Practices.

Beyond popular music and subcultures, I’m interested in utopian studies, urban studies, the avant-garde/modernism and critical theory, especially cultural materialism. 

Academic and professional qualifications

After completing a degree in English at Manchester Metropolitan University for which I received the highest 1st class mark of my cohort, I worked, moved to Berlin and travelled the United States. I applied for AHRC funding to take up postgraduate study at the University of Manchester, where I won full awards to pursue an MA in Post-1900 Literatures, Theories and Cultures followed by a PhD with Professor David Alderson as my supervisor. My thesis drew on critical theory to examine the politics of British post-punk, establishing my current research interests and forming the basis of my first monograph.

After my PhD, I took up the role of research assistant on the Leverhulme project ‘Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture 1976-1984’ alongside Professor Matthew Worley and Professor John Street, contributing to the development of a research methodology that brought together critical theory and cultural studies with archival historical research and political economy to shed new light on the punk and post-punk era.

External examiner roles

PhDs

-External examiner for Grace Healy: ‘There is No Authority But Yourself: Tracing first-wave British punk philosophy, from Nietzsche to Rotten’, University of Huddersfield February 2022

-External examiner for Bruno Verner, ‘Spaced Out in Paradise: Post Punk Futurities, Politics, Transitions, and Other Voices in Brazil’, Goldsmiths University October 2022

Expert reviewer for academic publishers

-Expert reviewer for Palgrave Macmillan and Manchester University Press on subculture/counterculture/popular music related submissions

-Peer reviewer for journals including European Journal of Cultural Studies, Cultural History, Punk + Post-Punk and Key Words 

Editorial Board membership

I am on the editorial board of Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism and Punk & Post-Punk.

Consultancy and Advisory Roles

I have worked with Manchester Digital Music Archive, advising on their exhibition Queer Noise, and with the 40th anniversary Punk London festival funded by the Mayor of London’s office.

Community Links and Impact

-Curated Manchester Digital Music Archive’s digital archiving of long running and influential post-punk zine City Fun 

-Public speaking for a range of organisations, events and causes, including Home Cinema, Louder Than Words, Manchester Histories Festival, LGBT History Month, UNISON, UCU, the Working Class Movement Library, Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention

-Journalistic work for publications including Tribune, OpenDemocracy and The Conversation

-Exhibition with Manchester Left Writers: ‘The Powerhouse Liberation Front’, Castlefield Gallery 2016 funded by the Jerwood Foundation

Other Academic Service (Administration and Management)

-Level 6 Stage Tutor, 2021-2022

-Unit leader, Manchester and the City 2020-

-e-learning co-ordinator, 2017-2020