+44 (0)161 295 2694                          +44 (0)779 1077 074 mob
g.a.mckay@salford.ac.uk                    http://georgemckay.org

Prof George McKay I joined the university in 2005, as Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Communication, Cultural & Media Studies Research Centre. Previously I worked at UCLan, where I held a similar professorial post. I am based at MediaCityUK.

To date, I have written or edited around a dozen books in media and cultural studies. My work has been funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (numerous awards), British Council, European Commission (Framework 6, Framework 7/HERA), Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, ESRC, Arts Council, HEFCE, among others. I am a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, for Media, and for Music. I have undertaken external examining responsibilities at around 15 institutions, at PhD, MA and BA levels. Currently I am externalling at Bradford Media School (MA Media portfolio) and University of East London (BA Media Studies programmes). I am an elected executive member of the UK’s national association for media scholars, MeCCSA (2010-2012). I have been a Visiting Fellow at University of Southern Maine (1994), University of Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria (1996), and at University of Sydney (2008).

I regularly organise national and international conferences, symposia and colloquium, both as lead organiser and as an active member of an organising committee. Notably, in 2011 I was lead organiser for the national Media, Communication & Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) annual conference at Salford, in January. I was also a member of the organising committee for the highly successful Jazz and National Identitites conference at the University of Amsterdam in September.

In 2012 I am lead organiser for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM UK & Ireland) biennial conference, being hosted by us at Salford. The theme for IASPM—which I have taken on responsibility for following the sad sudden death of my colleague Prof Dave Sanjek—is Imagining Communities Musically. 

I am a fairly frequent contributor to BBC and independent radio, having appeared on programmes as varied as Thinking Allowed (several times) and The Johnnie Walker Show. A two-part documentary radio series on the leading ABC National (Australia) programme Into the Music was based on my research on street music in 2009. I have also appeared on numerous television programmes—news and documentaries—and written for publications such as the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman. I review for Times Higher Education.

My areas of expertise for research, teaching, media comment and PhD supervision are:

They are listed below, with details about some of my publications, editorships, research projects. You can find much more about my work on my website http://georgemckay.org which includes links to open access versions of many of my publications, videos, and even some of my music (double bass, if you are wondering).

 

Alternative cultures and media, protest and social movements

My newest book, Radical Gardening: Idealism, Rebellion and Politics in the Garden (Frances Lincoln, 2011), was published in May 2011—around May Day/Beltane. This is a book about polemic landscapes, and the way in which gardens—yes, gardens!—figure in political culture. This includes, for instance, peace gardens, gardens and feminism, the public park as space of political protest, the utopian ‘cranks’ of the Garden City movement, fascist gardens, the organic and green movements, allotments and community gardens, guerrilla gardening. It draws on my earlier interest in festival culture, and the ways in which pop festivals often seem to transform/claim/pollute the green space of the countryside. 'A truly important book'—Times Higher Education. Many other reviews available here.

Community Gardening, Creativity and Everyday Culture AHRC Connected Communities project (2012), with the Universities of Manchester and Brighton, and community gardens in London, Mancheter and Sussex. Total award is £79,000. 'Food growing both communally and individually is a rapidly increasing socio-cultural phenomenon where new capacities, identities, connectivities and politics are emerging and whose empirical and theoretical significance is not yet fully understood. The number of community gardens in England in 2010 was four times greater than in 2005 (Milbourne 2011) and a number of public bodies have funded new communal gardens. The allotment movement more widely thrives in Britain today (McKay 2011)....'  

Society and Lifestyles EU FP6 research project partner, collaborating with eastern European universities on study of local subcultural groups from neo-pagans to neo-nazi skinheads (2006-09). A collection of essays from the project, entitled Subcultures and New Religious Movements in Russia and East-Central Europe, co-edited by me, was published in 2009 (Peter Lang).

I was founding co-editor in 2002 of the Routledge journal Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest. I was responsible for cultural and media studies submissions. In the seven years I co-edited it, Social Movement Studies progressed from two to four editions a year.

1998ed., DiY Culture: Party & Protest in Nineties Britain (Verso, 1998) ‘the essential guide to the story so far’—The Independent 

‘a powerfully written account of the rise of direct-action politics that runs counter to the Westminster-fixated mainstream’—New Statesman

‘the most uplifting and empowering book you’ll read in a long time’—Irvine Welsh

 Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance since the Sixties (Verso, 1996)

'the secret history of the last two decade'--Jon Savage‘Exemplary here is George McKay’s study of British resistance and protest since the 1960s. His work makes particularly clear the importance of post-1960s festivals to ongoing radical protest. Apart from McKay there seems to be no single author or tradition that is dominant, simply an ongoing accumulation of studies’—Tim Jordan and Adam Lent (eds.) ‘Introduction’, Storming the Millennium: The New Politics of Change

‘A history of an unwritten tradition… one of the most enjoyable books to be published this year… an account of very moral people consciously trying to create a new politics’—Red Pepper

Festival, community music

McKay and Ben Higham Community Music: Its History and Current Practice, Conmstructions of 'Community', Digital Turns and Future Soundings (AHRC, 2011)

I have recently completed, with Ben Higham, an AHRC research review on community music and digital media for the Connected Communities programme (grant: £26,773). Both the report (2,500 words) and the accompanying annotated bibliography are available open access. Here is the Executive Summary:

McKay and Higham 2011; AHRC-supported'The UK has been a pivotal national player within the development of community music practice. In the UK community music developed broadly from the 1960s and had a significant burgeoning period in the 1980s. Community music nationally and internationally has gone on to build a set of practices, a repertoire, an infrastructure of organisations, qualifications and career paths. There are elements of cultural and debatably pedagogic innovations in community music. These have to date only partly been articulated and historicised within academic research. This document brings together and reviews research under the headings of history and definitions; practice; repertoire; community; pedagogy; digital technology; health and therapy; policy and funding, and impact and evaluation. A 90-entry, 22,000 word annotated bibliography was also produced (McKay and Higham 2011). An informed group of 15 practitioners and academics reviewed the authors’ initial findings at a knowledge exchange colloquium and advised on further investigation. Some of the gaps in research identified are: an authoritative history, an examination of repertoire, the relationship with other music (practice), the freelance practitioner career, evidence of impact and value, the potential for a pedagogy.'

co-ed. with Pete Moser, Community Music: A Handbook (Russell House, 2005)Arts Council-supported

‘Music and songwriting are great at getting people together to express themselves. Community Music is a wonderful tool for all those who wish to tap into this latent creativity. Inspirational’—Billy Bragg

‘As close to a definitive book on community music as we are likely to see for some time… [McKay’s chapter] is a short history of the movement (and an admirable introduction to its philosophy)’—Andrew Peggie, Sounding Board

 

Glastonbury: A Very English Fair (Gollancz, 2000)

‘an energetic tumble through the history of twentieth–century English festival culture… In the end, the book becomes a juggling act, with all these ideologies flying through the air. We have punk cynicism, anarchist materialism and academic scepticism; three forms that are at least of similar shape and size, and which, you feel, McKay should be well practised at manipulating. But it is as if someone has thrown him a chainsaw, then a burning wand and a raw free-range egg in quick succession; hippie madness, from ley lines to Arthurian romance, from numerology to pyramid stages, proves difficult to balance. Does he manage to keep up the act without getting egg on his face? Well nearly’—C.J. Stone, Times Literary Supplement

ed., Carnivalising Pop: Festival Culture, Music, Media. This is a proposal for a collection of interdisciplinary academic essays I am currently working on. Popular music festivals are one of the strikingly successful and enduring features of seasonal popular cultural consumption for young people and older generations of enthusiasts. In 2008 in Britain alone there were over 500 festival events, from Glastonbury Festival to local, small scale or ‘boutique’ events. The festival has cemented its place in pop and rock, and in the seasonal cultural economy. The purpose of this book is to present the first collection of academic studies on festival culture as a whole, from its origins to a wide range of contemporary manifestations. It is an inter-disciplinary collection, drawing on Popular Music, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Performance, Film, History, Sociology, American Studies, Psychology.

In 2011 I was Professor in Residence at Kendal Calling pop festival, winner of national Small Festival Awards in 2010 and 2011.

Cultures of transatlanticism, in particular jazz

Rhythm Changes: Jazz Cultures and European Identities: I am a researcher on this really exciting and stimulating European research project (2010-2012) on jazz and national identity, which brings together academics and research students at Salford with collaborating institutions in the UK, the Netherlands, Austria, Norway and Denmark. Funded from the HERA budget for €1m it is the largest research project to date from British academics looking at jazz.

Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain (Duke UP, 2005)

‘quite simply the best book so far on jazz in Britain’—Andrew Blake

AHRC-supported‘a marvelous book. I admire George McKay's knowledge of jazz, the British left, and cultural history. His ability to blend those elements is to my knowledge unique and unprecedented, and his interviews with jazz musicians enrich immeasurably the story that he is telling”—Dennis Dworkin

‘It is only by reading Circular Breathing, George McKay's skilful examination of race relations, gender issues, and the Left in relation to British jazz, that we can understand why British jazz wasn't at the center of the European free-jazz revolution... Valuable and imaginative scholarship’—BookForum review

Circular Breathing benefitted from two AHRC awards, one for a project involved transcriptions of interviews with improvising musicians. Links to these and other interviews can be found, including images, as PDF files here on my website.

HEFCE FDTL3-supported

Editorial board member, Jazz Research Journal (2007-)

co-ed., with Neil Campbell and Jude Davies, Issues in Americanisation and Culture (Edinburgh UP, 2004). Funded with a subvention from HEFCE FDTL3 Amatas project.

co-ed., BAAS Paperbacks Series (Edinburgh UP 1993-2002).

Disability and cultural studies

This is my major area of current research, which has included the following activities:

Ian Dury badge, 1981: self and audience identificationThe book I am currently completing, entitled Shakin’ All Over: Rock, Pop and Disability, constitutes the first monograph on the subject of popular music and disability. It has chapters on polio and pop, hearing impairment, vocal cripping (singing disability), the out-of-control body, rock ‘madness’, and considers how the popular music industry functions as both empowering for its disabled cultural workers and how it disables. The moment we begin to look for, to discuss disability in popular music, we find it everywhere. Whether in its focus on bodies perfect and deviant alike, the romantic appeal in rock lyrics and lives to tropes of suffering or cognitive impairment, its damaged voices, its continuing status as expressive vehicle for emotional autobiography (from artists and audience members), or its intermittent fetishing of enfreakment, the book argues that in fact pop is a profoundly dismodern cultural formation and practice.

Media Studies