Professor Keith Negus
Keith Negus entered higher education as a mature student, having spent many years playing keyboards and guitar in a variety of bands after leaving school. He gained a degree in Sociology from Middlesex Universit and then completed a PhD study of the acquisition, production and promotion of recording artists at SouthBank University. He subsequently taught at the Universities of Leicester and Puerto Rico and was based in the Department of Media and Communications prior to moving the Department of Music at Goldsmiths. He is Director of the Popular Music Research Unit, convenor of BMus Popular Music, convenor of the MA Music (Popular Music Research) and a coordinating editor of Popular Music (Cambridge University Press).
Academic qualifications
BA, PhD
Areas of supervision
Current PhD students and their fields of study:
Adrian Sledmere – The concept of talent and the music industry.
Richard Witts – A historical study of BBC Music policy with particular reference to Radio 3.
Stephen Graham - Contemporary Music Studies: 'Experimental Music in the Twenty-First Century: non-notated "classical music" and non-popular "popular music"'
Research interests
His research engages with all aspects of the production, consumption and mediation of popular music and key debates in cultural theory. He is currently completing research on narrative, interpretation and the popular song; and developing research on musicians and the music industries.
Selected publications
Books
Bob Dylan, Equinox Publishing. 2008.
Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value. Sage, 2004. Jointly authored with Dr M. Pickering, Loughborough University.
Popular Music Studies, Arnold, 2002. Edited with Dr. David Hesmondhalgh, Open University.
Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. Routledge, 1999 Spanish edition published by Paidós, Barcelona, 2005.
Doing Cultural Studies, The Story of the Sony Walkman. Sage, 1997. Co-authored with Paul du Gay, Stuart Hall, Hugh Mackay, Linda Janes, all Open University
Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction. Polity Press (UK) 1996, and Wesleyan University Press (USA), 1997. Japanese edition published in 2004 by Editions de la roses vents – Suiseisha, Tokyo.
Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry. Edward Arnold. 1992
Journal articles
‘Authorship and the Popular Song’, Music and Letters Vol 93 No 4, 2011, 607-629. ISSN 0027-4224.
‘Bob Dylan’s Phonographic Imagination’, Popular Music, Vol 29 No 2, May 2010, pp213-228. ISSN 0261-1430.
‘Living, Breathing Songs: Singing Along With Bob Dylan’, Oral Tradition, Vol 22 No 1 pp71-83.
‘Musicians on Television: Visible, Audible and Ignored’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association. Vol. 131 No 2, 2006, pp310-330.
‘The Work of Cultural Intermediaries and the Enduring Distance Between Production and Consumption’, Cultural Studies, Vol. 16 No 4, 2002, pp501-515.
‘Belonging and Detachment: Musical Experience and the Limits of Identity’, Poetics, Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts, Vol. 30, 2002, pp133-145. Co-authored with Dra. Patria Román-Velázquez, City University.
‘Cultural Production and the Corporation: Musical Genres and the Strategic Management of Creativity in the U.S. Recording Industry’, Media, Culture and Society, Vol. 20 No. 3, 1998, pp359-379.
Chapters in books
‘Foreword’ in Paul Attinello, Janet K Halfyard & Vanessa Knights (eds) Music, Sound and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ashgate, 2010, pp xv-xviii. ISBN 978-0-7546-6042-2.
‘Rethinking Creative Production Away From the Cultural Industries’ in James Curran and David Morley (eds), Media and Cultural Theory, Routledge, 2006.
‘The Business of Rap: Between the Street and the Executive Suite’ in Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal (eds), That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, Routledge, 2004, pp525-540.
‘Identities and Industries: The Cultural Formation of Aesthetic Economies’ in P. du Gay & M. Pryke (eds) Cultural Economy, Sage, 2002, pp115-131.
‘Music Divisions: The Recording Industry and the Social Mediation of Popular Music’ in J. Curran (Ed) Media Organisations in Society, Arnold, 2000, pp240-254,
'The Production of Culture' in P. du Gay (ed) Production of Culture/ Cultures of Production. Sage, 1997, pp67-118
‘Sinéad O'Connor - Musical Mother' in S. Whitely (ed), Sexing the Groove: Popular Music, Gender and Sexuality. Routledge 1997, pp178-190.