The University of Leeds

Faculty Member, Institute of Communications Studies

Professor of Media and Music Industries

About

My research interests include:
•Media industries/cultural industries/creative industries
•All aspects of media and cultural production, contemporary and historical
•Music, society and culture, including popular music
•Social theory and theories of media, and the relations between them
•Media work, employment, careers etc
•Media and cultural policy

Much of my research has been about music; further details are below. I am currently writing a book on the ways in which music might enhance people’s lives, individually and collectively, and what often stops it from doing so. The provisional title is Why Music Matters, and it will be published in 2013.

I'm also working on a project called Cultural Policy Under New Labour, along with my colleagues David Lee, Melissa Nisbett and Kate Oakley. It's funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, and runs from 2012 to 2014.

My most recent book Creative Labour, co-written with Sarah Baker, examines work in the contemporary media and cultural industries. It was based on research funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council from 2006 to 2009. Various articles have also appeared based on this project – see below.

My book The Cultural Industries (Sage) is an analysis of changes and continuities in television, film, music, publishing and other industries since the 1980s, and of the rise of new media and cultural industries during that time. The second edition, published in March 2007, was a thoroughly revised, updated and expanded version of the first, published in 2002. A third edition will be published in November, 2012.

Finally, in answer to a question I’m often asked, it’s pronounced ‘Hez-mun-dalch’ with the stress on the first syllable. But nearly everyone gets it wrong, and I really don’t mind. The name comes from East Lancashire. And so do I.

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