Dr Simon Keegan-Phipps
Department of Music
The University of Sheffield
Jessop Building
34 Leavygreave Road
Sheffield
S3 7RD
email : s.keegan-phipps@sheffield.ac.uk
Biography
Dr Simon Keegan-Phipps is a Teaching Fellow in Ethnomusicology in the Department of Music at the University of Sheffield. He specializes in the field of contemporary English folk and traditional music, and has published on the educational institutionalization and recontextualization of traditional music in modern England.
In 2002 Simon graduated with a BA in Music from Durham University, where he was subsequently awarded an MA by Research in Ethnomusicology in 2004. After receiving a Doctoral Award from the AHRC in 2003, he completed a PhD in Ethnomusicology at Newcastle University in 2008, with a thesis entitled Teaching Folk; the Educational Institutionalization of Folk Music in Contemporary England. From 2007-9 he worked as project researcher on the AHRC funded project `Performing Englishness in New English Folk Music and Dance,´ at the University of Sunderland.
Research Interests
Simon has written extensively on the relationships between the recent resurgence in profile of the English folk arts, hegemonic processes within England´s folk music industry and socio-political constructions of English national identity. He has also conducted research on Balkan identities in Romanian pop music, and on regional identity, educational institutions and Celtic repertories in the folk music of the North East of England. He is now preparing to embark on a research project looking at music and comedy in contemporary popular culture.
Simon has a research interest in the organology of free-reed instruments, and is an experienced performer on the English concertina and piano accordion. He also performs regularly as a jazz pianist, and less regularly on guitar, ukulele, tenor banjo, trumpet and percussion.
Currrent Projects
Performing Englishness: identity and politics in a contemporary folk resurgence. Book; Co-authored with Dr. Trish Winter of the University of Sunderland – in preparation.
`An Aural Tradition With a Pause Button: recording technology and folk session culture in the North East of England.´ Single authored journal article – in preparation.
Selected Publications
2007. `The educational institutionalization of folk music; déjà vu in a contemporary English movement.´ Yearbook for Traditional Music. Vol. 39: 84-107.
Forthcoming. `Folk for Art´s Sake: English folk music in the mainstream milieu.´ Radical Musicology, http://www.radical-musicology.org.uk/, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Selected Conference Papers
`Multicultural/Intercultural England: Collaborative Constructions of National Identity in Contemporary Folk Music.´ Annual Conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, University of Liverpool, 13th – 17th July 2009.
`Multicultural/Intercultural England: Collaborative Constructions of National Identity in Contemporary Folk Music.´ Annual Conference of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, Liverpool John Moores University, 16th – 19th April 2009.
`An Oral [Aural] Tradition With a Pause Button: the role of recording technology within folk session culture in the North East of England.´ Annual Conference of the Ireland National Committee of the International Council for Traditional Music, University College Dublin, 26th – 27th February 2009.
`Englishness and the Imagined Village.´ With Dr. T. Winter (University of Sunderland). Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association Conference, University of Bradford, 14th – 16th January 2009.
`Folk for Art´s Sake: Arranging (and Composing) for the Recontextualization of English Folk Music.´ Annual Conference of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, Cardiff University, 9th – 12th April 2008.
`Performing Englishness in New English Folk Music and Dance.´ With Dr. T. Winter (University of Sunderland). Association of Festival Organisers Folk Industry Conference, Nottingham, 17th – 18th November 2007.