Biography

My first degree was in European Studies (German and Politics) at Queen Mary College, University of London, spending a year abroad at the Freie Universitaet Berlin. I did my PhD in German History at Liverpool on the history of women's radio in Germany during the Weimar Republic and Third Reich, again studying for a year in Berlin, at the Technische Universitaet. I have worked at Sussex since 1992, teaching media at first in the School of European Studies, then in the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies and the School of Humanities and now in the School of Media, Film and Music, where I am currently Head of the Media Subject Group.

Role

Head of Media in the School of Media, Film and Music

Convenor of the BA in Media Studies

Deputy Head of School

Convenor of the MA in Media and Cultural Studies

co-Convenor of the MA in Journalism and Media Studies

Research

My research focuses on the history and theory of the media, and broadcasting in particular. A main focus has been the interrogation of changing definitions of the public and the private and the interplay of gender politics and media history.

My current research centres on listening in the modern mediated public sphere, asking how listening has changed in relation to successive sound media and how the act of mediated listening figures in modern public life. Listening is explored as an activity in the public sphere, rather than as a code for the passivity long associated with audiences of mass media, with the intent to amplify the specifically auditory roots of the word audience, a word that combines the experiential with the public aspect of mediated culture.

I have supervised doctoral research on public sphere theory, European media, and emergent media, both historical and contemporary (including dissertations on early cinema in Brighton, the early television industry at Alexandra Palace and the emergence of the internet as a democratic forum), and would welcome research applications in these areas, as well in media and gender studies.

Related work

Member of the Edoitorial Board of The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media.

Founding member of 'The Radio Studies Network' which is devoted to raising the profile of radio within the field of media and cultural studies and the academy more generally.

Member of the Southern Broadcasting History Research Group.

Teaching

I am on research leave until January 2012, but will teach the MA course 'Media Theory and Research' on my return in the Spring. Other courses I have recently convened include the second year courses 'Media and Politics' and 'Analysing Radio', the final year course, 'Media and the Public Sphere', and the MA option 'European Media in Transition'.

I supervise a number of doctoral students, whose work tends to focus on questions of media and the public sphere, the role of the media in processes of democratisation, and the emergence of new media, past and present.

Current research students:

Sohyung Kim, Internet Communities and Political Communication in Korea (co-supervised with Michael Bull)

Catarina Passos, European identity and the management of public (in)formation (co-supervised with Francis McGowan)

Alan D'Aiello, From Handbills to Handhelds: the changing nature of public communication among gay men in Brighton (co-supervised with Andy Medhurst)

Javier Mato, Internet, Journalism and Democracy in Spain (co-supervised with Caroline Bassett)

Meaghan Zurn, American Broadcast News, the Public and Agency during National Crisis (co-supervised with Ben Highmore)

 

Former research students:

Christiana Karayianni, The impact of different forms of communication on bicommunal relations in Cyprus (successfully defended 2011) [co-supervised with Anastasia Christou]

Polly Ruiz, Articulating Dissent from the Margins to the Mainstream: The Communicative Strategies of Protest Coalitions (awarded 2010) [co-supervised with Janice Winship]

Jairo Lugo, Democracy, Development and ICTs: A cross-national study of the UK and Venezuela (awarded 2007)

Emma Sandon, From Vision to Mundanity:Television at Alexandra Palace, London 1936-1952: Memories of Production. An Oral History Approach to the Reassessment of the Early Period of British Televison History (awarded 2004)

Garrett Monaghan, The South Coast Bubble: The Emergence of the Moving-Image in Brighton Before 1914 (awarded 2001)

Sae-Eun Kim, Communication, Culture and the Korean Public Sphere (awarded Jan 2001)

Jonathan Peck, In Search of Public Discourse: The internet and the next transformation of the public sphere (awarded 2000)

Student Consultation

My office hours in the Spring term are Mondays and Wednesdays, 11-12 in Silverstone 337, or other times by arrangement.

NB Week 5: on Tues 1-2, not Weds 11-12;

     Week 6: on Tues 4-5, not Weds 11-12.

Selected publications

Authored books

1997 Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio and the Public Sphere, 1923-1945 Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 320 pp. ISBN 978-0-472-09616-9

Chapters in books

2009 Towards a Periodisation of Listening: Radio & Modern Life Andrew Crisell, ed., in Radio: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies New York: Routledge ISBN 0415448646

2006 The Invention of a Listening Public: Radio and its Audiences Corey Ross and Karl Christian Fuehrer, ed., in Mass Media, Culture and Society in 20th Century Germany Basingstoke: Palgrave pp. 61-79 ISBN 9780230008380

2005 Oeffentliches Zuhoeren:Eine alternative Geschichte des Radiohoerens Daniel Gethmann and Markus Stauff, ed., in Politiken der Medien Zurich and Berlin: diaphanes pp. 195-208 ISBN 978-3-935300-55-1

2004 Continuties and Change in Women's Radio Andrew Crisell, ed., in More than A Music Box: Radio Cultures And Communities in a Multi-Media World New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books pp. 145-164 ISBN 978-1-84545-046-5

2002 Radio & Political Transition: Public Service, Propaganda & Promotional Culture Michele Hilmes; Jason Loviglio, ed., in The Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of US Radio Broadcasting New York: Routledge ISBN 9780415928212

2001 Radio in the Great Depression: Promotional Culture, Public Service, and Propaganda Michelle Hilmes and Jason Loviglio, ed., in The Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of US Radio Broadcasting Oxford: Routledge pp. 21-40 ISBN 978-0-415-92821-2

2000 From Plauderei to Propaganda: On Women's Radio in Germany, 1923-1935 Caroline Mitchell, ed., in Women and Radio: Airing Differences London: Routledge pp. 48-63 ISBN 978-0-415-22071-2

1999 Langeweile, Kitsch und Zerstreuung: Die Modernisierung der Hoerkunst (Bored to Distraction: The Modernisation of the Art of Listening) Inge Marßolek und Adelheid von Saldern, ed., in Radiozeiten. Herrschaft, Alltag, Gesellschaft (1924-1960) Frankfurt: Deutscher Rundfunkarchiv pp. 218 - 230 ISBN 9783932981449

1996 Driving The Message Home: Nazi Propaganda in the Private Sphere Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey, ed., in Gender Relations in German History: power agency and experience from the sixteenth to the twentieth century London: Duke University Press pp. 189 - 210 ISBN 978-0822318965

Journal articles

2011 Listening Overlooked: An Audit of Listening as a Category in the Public Sphere in Javnost - The Public Volume 18 pp. 5-20

2011 Oeffentliches Zuhoeren: Eine alternative Geschichte des Radiohoerens in Zeithistorische Forschungen Volume 2011

2008 Ten Years of Radio Studies: The Very Idea in The Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media Volume 6 pp. 21-32

2007 Home, work and everyday life: Roger Silverstone at Sussex in International Journal of Communication Volume 1 pp. 61-69

2000 Towards a periodisation of listening: radio and modern life in International Journal of Cultural Studies International Journal of Cultural Studies Volume 3 pp. 279 - 288 ISBN 13678779

1994 From Plauderei to Propaganda: On Women's Radio in Germany, 1923-1935 in Media Culture and Society Volume 16 pp. 589-608

Conference contributions

2011 From Radio Listening to Television Viewing in the 1950s: Reflections on a Blindspot in Media History in Broadcasting in the 1950s: AHRC Symposium Grynygog, University of Wales:, Status unknown

2011 Speaking Up and Listening Out: Media technologies and the re-sounding of the public sphere in Electrified voices: Medial technical, Socio-historical and Cultural aspects of voice transfer Konstanz, Germany:, Status unknown

2010 Paradoxes and Paradigms: Broadcasting and its Publics in the 1930s in Broadcasting in the 1930s: New Media in a Time of Crisis University of Madison, Wisconsin July 6th-9th 2010:, Status unknown

2009 Listening Overlooked: rethinking media in the public sphere in The Listening Project University of Sydney 9th December 2009:, Status unknown

2008 Radio and the Ethics of Listening in European Communications Research and Education Association Conference Barcelona, Spain:, Status unknown

2008 The Public Sphere as Auditorium in Sounding Out 4 University of Sunderland, UK, 4-6th September 2008:, Status unknown

2007 Noise and the Phonographic Imagination in Modernity in Cultural Studies Now Docklands Campus, University of East London 19-22 July 2007:, Status unknown

2007 On the Listening Subject and the Subject of Listening in the Public Sphere in Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference Chicago:, Status unknown

2007 Radio in the Round: The Challenges of Cultural History in The Radio Conference: A Transnational Forum University of Lincoln 16th-19th July 2007:, Status unknown

2006 Sounds in Body and Mind: Confrontations with the Noise of Modernity in Sounding Out 3 University of Sunderland, 7-9 September 2006:, Status unknown

2003 Radiogenie and the Public Horizon of Experience in The Radio Conference: A Transnational Forum University of Wisconsin, Madison 28-31 July 2003:, Status unknown

2001 The Mouthpiece of Modernity: Gender, Consumption and the Radio in the 1920s in Gender, Consumption and History Freie Universitat, Berlin, 2001:, Status unknown