Research staff

Dr Simon Barber

Research Fellow

Dr Simon Barber researches, writes and lectures about popular music, the music industries, digital culture and jazz. As a member of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Simon is particularly interested in the study of songwriting, and relationships between creative workers and industry. He convenes the...

Dr Rachel-Ann Charles

Course Director & Lecturer

Rachel-Ann is a Course Director on the MA in Global Media Management and she lectures across undergraduate courses within the School of Media. She is also a Researcher at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR), Birmingham City University (BCU) and has made contributions to the study of social action...

Dr Pedro Cravinho

Keeper of the Archives – Faculty of Arts, Design and Media, Senior Research Fellow – Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR)

Dr Pedro Cravinho (born 1968) began his musical career as a self-taught electric bassist taking part of Oporto's late 1980s pop-rock scene. Cravinho got a music education on classical double bass and studied jazz (electric bass and double bass) before starting a career as a freelance bassist and educator. After taking a degree...

Professor Nicholas Gebhardt

Professor of Jazz and Popular Music Studies, Director of Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research

Nick Gebhardt is Professor of Jazz and Popular Music Studies and Director of Research in the Birmingham School of Media. His work focuses on jazz and popular music in American culture and his publications include Going For Jazz: Musical Practices and American Ideology (Chicago), Vaudeville Melodies: Popular Musicians and...

Deborah Mawer

Emeritus Professor of Music

Deborah Mawer was formerly Research Professor of Music and Director of Research at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire; across 2016-19 she led a large AHRC-funded project, entitled ‘ Accenting the Classics: Durand’s Édition classique (c. 1915 - 25) as a French Prism on the Musical Past ’. She joined the Conservatoire in 2013,...

Jeremy Price

Head of Jazz

Jeremy Price (born 1970) studied at Birmingham Conservatoire and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and has since followed a career as a freelance trombonist and jazz educator. Jeremy has been Head of Jazz at Birmingham Conservatoire since the Jazz Department was established in 1999 and wrote the Conservatoire's first ever...

Professor Tim Wall

Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies

Tim Wall is Professor of Radio and Popular Music Studies in the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. His work focuses on popular music cultures and their mediation and history, notably those around jazz, soul and reggae. He has published extensively in international journals and books, and he applies his insights...

Professor Tony Whyton

Professor of Jazz Studies

Tony Whyton is Professor of Jazz Studies at BCU. His critically acclaimed books Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Beyond A Love Supreme: John Coltrane and the Legacy of an Album (Oxford University Press, 2013) have sought to develop cross-disciplinary methods of musical...