Jazz Studies
The Jazz Studies cluster aims to provide BCU research leadership in jazz regionally, nationally, and internationally. The cluster is composed of interdisciplinary researchers, practitioners and promoters working primarily within Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, and external contexts. The cluster seeks to engage in international partnerships with universities and non-academic organisations across Europe, the United States, Australia, South America, and the Asian Pacific region.
Our aim is to place jazz in the context of major cultural transformations in order to critically, and imaginatively break down the barriers between how we think about music and how we think about its relationship to the arts, culture, society, politics, and history more broadly.
The cluster regularly co-ordinates international jazz events and publications, including the Rhythm Changes and Documenting Jazz conferences, and the Routledge Transnational Studies in Jazz book series. Our work benefits from access to several significant jazz collections at the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media Archive, including the Phil Miller and Duke Ellington Society UK collections and the National Jazz Archive satellite collection, among others, and we have supported multiple national and international projects including Cultural Heritage and Improvised Music in European Festivals (JPI Heritage Plus), Jazz and Everyday Aesthetics (AHRC) and New Directions in Digital Jazz Studies (AHRC/NEH), Silent Form (AHRC) and Jazz and Musical Theatre (AHRC).
People (RBC)
- Professor Tony Whyton (co-lead)
- Dr Pedro Cravinho (co-lead)
- Dr Mike Fletcher
- Ed Puddick
- Arnie Somoygi
- Jeremy Price
People (BCMCR)
- Professor Nicholas Gebhardt
- Professor Tim Wall
- Brian Homer (Visiting Research Fellow, freelance photographer)
People (External)
- Dr Ben Curry (University of Birmingham)
- Tony Dudley Evans (Promoter)
- Dr Chris Mapp (Artistic Director, Warwick Arts Centre)
- Nadia Mannington (PhD candidate, University of Kent)
- Professor Roger Fagge (University of Warwick)
- Annette Walker, Dancer (AHRC/LAHP funded PhD candidate at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama - 2023-2027)