Research Director

Tim Wall, Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies in the Birmingham School of Media at BCU, leads the Interactive Cultures team.  He is the primary investigator for music industries and creative commons in the AHRC KTF run by Interactive Cultures.

Tim’s main areas of interest relate to popular music culture, the record industry and music radio. He is particularly interested in studies which combine political economy with cultural analysis, and which explore the implications of new technology.

He is co-author of Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context published by Pearson Longman, which is fast becoming a key textbook for university media courses.  His earlier book Studying Popular Music Culture was published by Arnold and was widely respected for the way it engaged students in serious scholarship in the area. His research covers quite a wide area and his most recent publications include: music programming in US college radio stations, a historiography of free jazz saxophonist David Murray, an ethnographic study of radio professionals and music programming in a UK local radio station, a chapter on fad dances in late-1950s / early 1960s USA, an analysis of radio regulation in the UK; the political economy of internet music radio; and the politics of dancing on the Northern Soul scene. He is currently working on research into the place of the transistor radio in the US music culture of 1950s with Nick Webber, and with Paul Long on the way television represents popular music’s past .

He is Editor of the Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media, and until recently chair of the Radio Studies Network, the lead international organisation for radio scholars and teachers.  He has been co-chair of The Radio Conference: A Transnational Forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, 2003; at Lincoln  University in 2007, and at York University, Toronto, Canada in 2009.

Books, Chapters, Articles

Since 2000:

• 2010 – ‘The Transistor Radio’ with Nick Webber in Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music and Sound Studies
• 2010 – ‘Jazz music communities online’ with Andrew Dubber  Journal of New Music Research
• 2010 – ‘Jazz Britannia: mediating the story of British jazz’s past on television’ with Paul Long Jazz Research Journal
• 2009 – ‘Specialist music, public service and the BBC in the internet age’ with Andrew Dubber the Radio Journal 7/1
• 2009 – Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context [with Paul Long] Pearson
• 2008 – ‘Rocking around the Clock: Dance Crazes of the 1950s and 1960s’, in Julie Malnig (ed) Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader
• 2007 – ‘David Murray: The making of a progressive jazz musician’ 2007 Jazz Research Journal 1/2, p173 – 203
• 2007 – ‘Finding an alternative: music programming in US college radio’ in the Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media (2007) Volume 5/ Issue 1
• 2007 – Making money out of music: the development of regional music economies Digital Central
• 2006 – New broadcast technologies UNESCO [editor] 2006
• 2006 – ‘Calling the tune: Resolving the Tension Between Profit and Regulation in Commercial Radio’. Southern Review
• 2006 – ‘Out On the Floor: the Politics of Dancing on the Northern Soul Scene’, Popular Music 25/3.
• 2004 – ‘The Political Economy of Internet Music Radio’, The Radio Journal, 2/1.
• 2003 – ‘Interpreting and Using Subject Benchmark Information in Communication, Media, Film and Cultural Studies’, ADC-LTSN, March.
• 2003 – Studying Popular Music, Arnold: London.
• 2002 – ‘Commercial Radio and the Construction of Audiences’, electronic working papers in radio.
• 2000 – ‘Policy, Pop, and the Public: The Discourse of Regulation in British Commercial Radio’ Journal of Radio Studies.

Conference Contributions

Since 2000:

• 2009 – ‘Specialist Music, Public Service Broadcasting and the Challenge of New Social Media’ The Radio Conference, York University, Toronto, Canada, July 2009
• 2009 – ‘Mediating popular music heritage: British television’s narratives of popular music’s past’ with Paul Long IASPM
• 2009 – ‘Changing cultural co-ordinates: the transistor radio and space / time / identity’ Mobile Music Symposium Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA May
• 2009 – ‘Ken Burns’ ‘Jazz’: popular intellectuals and the vox populi’ Leeds International Jazz Conference March
• 2008 – ‘Jazz Britannia: mediating the story of British jazz’s past on television’ with Paul Long Salford New Jazz Histories Seminar November 2008
• 2008 – ‘BBC specialist music radio listeners online’ MeCSSA January
• 2008 – ‘BBC jazz radio listeners online’ Leeds International Jazz Conference March
• 2007 – ‘Studying popular music culture’ inaugural professorial lecture UCE April
• 2007 – ‘Music programming on college radio in the USA’ The Radio Conference, July
• 2007 – ‘David Murray: inside and outside jazz’ Leeds International Jazz Conference March
• 2006 – ‘Jazz on UK Radio: a Historiography’ Leeds International Jazz Conference, March, Leeds.
• 2006 – ‘Consuming Online Music’, MeCCSA Conference, 13-15 January, Leeds.
• 2005 – ‘Ofcom’s proposals for commercial radio regulation’, Radio Studies Network Conference, UCE in Birmingham, 7 April.
• 2005 – ‘National Regulation in an Age of Global Radio’, 5th International Conference of Local and Alternative Public Radio and Television Stations , 23-26 February, Seville, Spain.
• 2004 – ‘The Internet and Changes in the Structure of the International Radio Industry’, Radio Studies Network Conference, University of Luton. January.
• 2003 – ‘The Political Economy of Internet Radio’, The Radio Conference, Madison Wisconsin, USA. July.
• 2002 – ‘Employability and the Media Studies Curriculum’, MECCSA , University of Reading.
• 2001 – ‘Commercial Radio and the construction of Audiences’, Glasgow Radio Seminar, Glasgow.
• 2000 – ‘Rethinking Audience Research Through the Radio Research Project’ MeCCSA Conference, Sheffield University.

Contact Tim: tim.wall@bcu.ac.uk