About
I was awarded my PhD from the University of Huddersfield in 2014. My research explored contested themes in social history and musicology. Even though brass bands were a national movement I analysed the bands of the Southern Pennines to explain why brass bands became such a powerful metonym of northern working-class culture. I found that this cliché emerged from ca. 1840-1914 through a number of elements that were largely external to the brass band movement.
I have published on brass bands and aspects of class, gender and region. My ongoing research continues into the social networks that emerged from musical groups in the long nineteenth century and beyond. My current research projects include women and gender in military bands; jazz and working-class identity in a 1930’s Staffordshire town, and the role of discotheques in provincial life throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
I have led adult-education courses at the
University of Huddersfield and the University of York, and I have contributed research to the AHRC-funded
Making Music in Manchester during World War One project, based at the Royal Northern College of Music. I also write for the northern ezine
Northern Soul as a music correspondent.
I am seeking post-doctoral opportunities.
Education
EDUCATION
2007-2014:
University of Huddersfield, School of Music, Humanities and Media
PhD in Social History and Musicology (part-time, funded by United Technologies
Corporation’s Employee Scholarship Programme)
Thesis Title:
‘Slate-Grey Rain and Polished Euphoniums’: Southern Pennine Brass Bands, the Working Class and the North c. 1840-1914
Supervisors: Dr Lisa Colton and Professor Paul Ward
Examiners: Prof Trevor Herbert and Professor Keith Laybourn
2004-2006:
Leeds Metropolitan University , MA in Social and Cultural History
1995-1998:
City of Leeds College of Music: Graduate Diploma in Music Publications
Edited Collection:
Anne Baldwin, Chris Ellis, Stephen Etheridge, Keith Laybourn and Neil Pye (Eds.)
Class, Culture and Community: New Perspectives in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Labour History(Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, 2012)
Chapters in Edited Collections:
‘Brass Bands in the Southern Pennines, 1857-1914: The Ethos of Rational Recreation and Perceptions of Working-Class Respectability’, in, Anne Baldwin, Chris Ellis, Stephen Etheridge, Keith Laybourn and Neil Pye (Eds)
Class, Culture and Community: New Perspectives in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Labour History (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, 2012) , pp. 37-54.
‘Music as a Lifelong Pursuit for Bandsmen in the Southern Pennines, ca.1840-1914: Reflections on Working-Class Masculinity’, in, Catherine Haworth and Lisa Colton (Eds.)
Gender, Age and Musical Creativity (Ashgate, Farnham, 2015), pp. 83-100.
Forthcoming:
‘Representations of the Working Class and the Construction of Cultural Identity: Brass Band Contests, Brass Bands, and Bandsmen in the Press, ca. 1840-1914’ in,
The Routledge Companion to Working-Class History (2018), pp, tbc.
Journal Articles:
‘Southern Pennine Brass Bands and the Creation of Northern Identity, c. 1840-1914: Musical Constructions of Space, Place and Region’,
Northern History (November 2016), pp. 1-18.
Forthcoming:
‘John Robert Fielden: Soldier, Bandsman or Quarryman? Aspects of Working-Class Identity in the Rossendale Valley, c. 1880-1916’, in, the
Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historical Society, (University of Liverpool), pp. tbc.
Book Reviews:
Chris Helme,
What Brass Bands Did for Me (The History Press, 2009)
Four Bars Rest:
http://www.4barsrest.com/reviews/general/lit018.asp#.WlIq71Vl_IV. (24 June, 2010)
Media:
Radio:
‘How Brass Conquered the World?’ BBC World Service – produced by Made in Manchester, first broadcast on the 30 December, 2017, 14.10 hours
Magazines:
Regular contributions to the ezine
Northern Soul
Upcoming Talks and Conferences
The Paris Conservatoire and The Royal Northern College of Music, Musical Institutions in Manchester and Paris during the First World War, ‘Brass Band Repertoire in Manchester’s Public Parks in World War One: Tradition and Patriotism’ (March, 2018) Memberships
Associate Member of the Centre for Music, Gender and Identity (MuGi) at Huddersfield University
Associate Member of the Academy of British and Irish Studies at Huddersfield University
