Research group: Music and Sonic Studies Manchester

About our research

We explore the musical beats and the sonic streets of Manchester and beyond.

Our research interests focus on how music and sound shape our identity, communities, spaces and understanding of the world. We do this by looking at how they are produced and received. And we consider the mindset and social influences behind their composition.

Our work involves lecturers and researchers from across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, from human geography to fashion. This gives us unique insights and new areas to explore.

We aim to engage and inspire through our innovative research by:

• linking Manchester to other metropolitan areas across the globe through sound and music, supporting the city’s renowned music culture and night time economy

• working with youth organisations, schools, archives, and museums across the region and internationally

• running practice-led research and projects that support social change

• hosting a monthly free lecture series with international speakers, including musicologists, DJs and historians.

Research themes and experience

Our research has four main themes:

• archives, heritage, and digital developments 
• borderlands and mobilities
• DIY music cultures 
• sonic spaces and places 

We have particular experience in:

• popular music cultures and sub-cultures
• placemaking
• music cities
• social movements and protest
• gender and music worlds
• digital and transnational music collaborations
• social network analysis
• the intersection of landscape and sound
• haunting sounds and spaces
• music and the occult
• race, gender and pop music fandom
• the links between gothic literature and music
• sound in gothic writing
• the intersections between modernist writing and sonic cultures
• the sound-image-space relationship
• sound and teaching
• hybrid and peripheral spaces, music and sound archives and heritage