The members of the interactive cultures research group make regular contributions to the research seminar series organised by our host, The Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. You’ll find details of our future and past seminars here, and if you are interested in joining us for one or more of the events do get in touch with Jez Collins, the seminar series coordinator at .
Current Research Seminars
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-Wednesday 03/07/13
2pm – Speaker: Prof Tony Whyton
Salford Music Research Centre
Title: ‘Song of Praise: Musicians, Myths and the “Cult” of John Coltrane’
Studies of popular music and fandom have grown into a sophisticated field of enquiry over recent years. Fan communities and interests are widespread, and several popular music scholars have been at pains to stress the need to resist depictions of fans as cultural “others” and to engage instead with fandom as part of everyday life.
Today, studies of music fandom are multidimensional but also contested in many ways, as the nature of fan debates
challenges established notions of objectivity, cultural value and authority, as well as ongoing attitudes to modernity and the role of the mass media. When considering the debates that have emerged in popular music research about fan cultures over recent years, several interesting and subtle differences occur when applying insights on fandom to jazz discourse, especially when examining the reverence of an iconic artist such as John Coltrane. Coltrane is arguably the most revered icon in jazz history, inspiring an obsessive following of writers, record collectors and enthusiasts. Taking up the challenge of dispelling the mythology of fans as imagined “others” and exploring ways in which fandom permeates a range of personal and professional contexts, I examine the dis- course of musicians as fans in jazz.
-3pm – Speaker: Prof Tim Wall Birmingham City University
Title: Rethinking ‘British popular music’ through the work of Steven Feld
In this paper I’ll be using the idea of cosmopolitanism
developed by anthropologist Steven Feld and deploying it as a way to open up our thinking about American-dervided popular music in Europe. I’ll sneak in some examples form jazz, but I will argue that the points hold more widely for other forms of British music as well.
Previous Research Seminars
-Wednesday 19/06/13
Matt Grimes: Birmingham City University
Title: Punk ‘zines – ‘symbols of defiance’ from the print to the digital age
Siobhan Stevenson: Birmingham City University
-Wednesday 05/06/13
Dr Paul Reilly: University of Leicester Title: Social media, sousveillance and civil unrest in the United Kingdom
Jennifer Jones & David McGillivray: University of the West of Scotland Title: Citizen Media: Translating Theory to Practice
-Wednesday 15/05/13
Dr John Mercer - BCU
Title: Acting and Behaving Like a Man: Rock Hudson’s Performance Style
Annette Naudin - BCU
Title: An exploration of personal agency in cultural entrepreneurs
-Wednesday 1/05/13
Sam Coley - BCU
Title: David Bowie on the radio
Oliver Carter - BCU
Title: Short term pain for long term gain”: A pragmatic approach to completing a PhD while working full time.
-Wednesday 17/04/13
Stephanie Pitts – University of Sheffield - Understanding live listening
-Wednesday 17/04/13
Dr Andy Williams – Cardiff University - The Value of UK Hyperlocal News: Findings form a content analysis
-Wednesday 13/03/13
MA Cultural Industries students – Budapest University of Technology and Economic – BLAT Project
-Wednesday 20/03/13
Marco Mulcahy – Cross cultural media ethics: How journalism practices vary by country.
-Wednesday 06/02/13
Prof James Thompson & Ruth Daniel – University of Manchester – Performance in place of war
Peter Wilby
-Wednesday 20/02/13
Dr Kerry Gough – Dead Special: Zombies, SFX and Making the Undead Respectable in the Reception of AMC’s The Walking Dead
Emmanouil Melissourgakis – The rise of online social networks: the case of Facebook. A quantitative and qualitative research investigation into social changes, attitudes, behaviours and use.
-Wednesday 23/01/13
Gavin Schaffer Making Multiculturalism on British TV,1960-80
Noha Atef Citizen Journalism in the Arab region
-Wednesday 5/12/12
Dr Daniel Ashton - Cultural Work and Higher Education
Marcelo Simão de Vasconcellos : Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games’ Potential for Brazilian Health Communication
-Wednesday 14/11/2012
Alexandra Lockett: Project Pigeon
Antonio Planells: Video games as ludofictional worlds: The emergence of playable fiction in the Ludology-Narratology debate
Chris Phipps Special Research event : The Tube at 30 with Chris Phipps - An evening of music and television history.
-Wednesday 17/10/12
Jon Hickman : How grassroots and community media negotiate their position as ‘hyperlocal’ producers.
John Mercer Title: The enigma of the male sex symbol
-Wednesday 3/10/12
Professor Tim Wall: Research Activities and REF Return Strategy 2012/13
Dave Harte & Jerome Turner: ‘Understanding the role of Hyperlocal Publishing as an aspect of Creative Citizenship’