Recent News

13 November 2007

Chapter published in Routledge Companion to Gothic

I'm really pleased to have a chapter in Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy's new edited collection, The Routledge Companion to Gothic. The collection brings together a broad range of contributions to the study of Gothic culture and includes a number of chapters on contemporary goth subculture. My own contribution has the rather generic title 'Goth Music and Subculture' but my discussion has a more specific purpose than that. Specifically I address the extent of the coherence between contemporary goth subculture and broader Gothic traditions, before going on to focus on what I regard as a key methodological question. Specifically, I place emphasis on the value of ethnographic research, suggesting that it may be mistaken to assume all the details and explanations about the motivations, behaviours and identities of goths can be understood through the analysis of goth or indeed Gothic cultural texts. Comments welcome!

2 September 2007

Online Journals, Social Networking - article published in NMS

Social Networking Software has become a key area of interest, both within and beyond academia and it is certainly an area I hope to pursue in greater and greater detail in the coming months. This article is based on users of LiveJournal, a website centred on personal blogging, but also something of a pioneer of social networking features such as user profiles, friends lists and the like. It was accepted for publication two years ago but I believe that, in spite of the various changes to social software between then and now, many of the observations and findings have a clear significance when thinking about uses of more recent platforms such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. The article can be accessed via the New Media and Society journal homepage. If are not a subscriber and are interested in the article, please contact me.

12 June 2007

Youth Cultures book released!

I'm very pleased to announce that Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes, edited by myself and Wolfgang Deicke, has now been released and is available for purchase.   The book outlines key themes in the contemporary study of the identities and lifestyles of young people via research case studies by scholars from the UK, the US and mainland Europe. The book addresses core theoretical and methodological questions as well as key substantive themes, including commerce, power and politics, issues of gender and ethnicity, uses of place and space and impacts of new media and communications.

Previous News

27 March 2007 - Two immanent publications...

21 January 2007 - Seminar - Young People, New Technologies and Political Engagement

26th November 2006 - BBC Culture Show, Youth Cultures update

10th October 2006 - Walkie Talkie event in Belgium

5th August 2006 - Uses of Blogs released and available for purchase

9th July 2006 - Youth Cultures submitted & Successful Kaunas trip

16th June 2006 - Youth Cultures book almost complete, Lithuania trip

3 May 2006 - Article on Goth Culture and Violence in Dose Magazine

15th April 2006 - BMJ Study Identifies Correlation Between Goths and Self-Harm