Research

My research area is focused on the intersection between radio/audio and technology, in particular how these new technologies offer opportunities for content creators and listeners. I am interested in considering what these changes mean for the form of the content, and how the arrival of new technologies impacts upon content. Recent work has considered the nature of podcasting as an established media form and the shifting economies of the UK audio industries.

Journal articles

2021: No longer the only game in town: British indies, podcasts and the new audio economy of independent production Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture, Vol 12(1), pp 51064

2020: Radio, music, podcasts – BBC Sounds: Public service radio and podcasts in a platform world Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media. Vol 18(1) pp 63-78

2016: “Podcasting: Considering the evolution of the medium and its association with the word ‘radio Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media. Volume 11(1) pp7-22

2016: ‘Part of the Establishment: Reflecting on 10 Years of Podcasting as an Audio Medium‘ Convergence . Vol 22(6) pp 661-671

2015:  ‘A Golden Age of Podcasting? Evaluating Serial in the Context of Podcast Histories‘ Journal of Radio and Audio Media: 22(2) pp170-178

2013: ‘Radio with Pictures: Radio visualisation in BBC national radio‘, The Radio Journal 11(2): 169-84.

2006: ‘Will the ipod kill the radio star? Profiling Podcasting as Radio‘, Convergence 12(2): 143-162.

Book chapters

2023: Radio in the Round: Reflections on the Future of Sound Media, in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio (Editors: Kathryn McDonald and Hugh Chignell)

2022: What is a podcast? Mapping the technical, cultural, and sonic boundaries between radio and podcasting in The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies – Edited By Mia Lindgren, Jason Loviglio

2019: ‘Podcasts and Vodcasts’ Entry in The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies. Wiley.

2018: ‘Just Because You Play a Guitar and Are from Nashville Doesn’t Mean You Are a Country Singer’: The Emergence of Medium Identities in Podcasting in ‘Podcasting: New Aural Cultures & Digital Media’ Eds; Llinares, Fox, Berry. Palgrave MacMillan.

2015: ‘Serial and ten years of podcasting: Has the medium finally grown up?’ in M. Oliveria and F. Riberio (eds) Radio, Sound and Internet, LASICS, University of Minho

2014: ‘The future of radio is the internet, not on the internet’ in M. Oliveira, G. Stachyra and G. Starkey (eds), Radio: The Resilient Medium (Sunderland: Centre for Research in Media & Cultural Studies)

2004: ‘Speech Radio in the Digital Age’ in Andrew Crisell (ed), More than a Music Box: Radio Cultures and Communities in a Multi-Media World (Berghahn Books).

Reviews

2009 Review of “Sound Moves” By Michael Bull (2007) In Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media Volume 7 (1)

Audio

Due to the pandemic the AOIR 2020 conference went online. I joined a panel of podcast studies academics for a panel on the formalisation of podcasting. We summitted long abstracts and summary videos, but then came together to present our ideas and discuss them in a podcast

Conference Papers and Presentations

+A Media Theory of Podcasting. Paper at Podcast Studies ICA Pre-Conference. Toronto Metrpolitain University, Ontario, Canada. May 23rd 2023
+ Are Podcasts Reithian? Conference paper at ‘Navingating the waves of change’ 100 years of BBC Radio at the University of Bedfordhshire in Luton, November 2022
+’Stick a pin in it: defining podcasts in the age of platforms’ Keynote paper at Podcasting Poetics, Mainz, Germany October 2019
+ BBC Sounds and the search for the Netflix of Podcasts – Models of listening to radio and podcasts in a platform world.’ ECREA Radio Research Conference, Siena, Italy. September 2019
+ ‘A Pantone of Podcasts: Typologies and Understandings of Podcasting’ The Radio Conference, Prato, Italy, July 2018
+ ‘Radio’s relationship with podcasting  – ECREA Radio Research Conference, Lublin, Poland – September 2017
+’Why we need to talk about Podcast Studies’: JPOD16, Malaga, Spain (invited) [PDF]
+Worldwide, Always On: Beats 1 as Transnational radio” a paper at the The Radio Conference, 6th July 2016.
+ “Podcasting was made for mobiles” – Invited Seminar paper, University of Murcia, Spain, March 2016
+ “10 years is a long time in podcasting” Netstation 2015 Conference, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal. April 2015
+ ‘The future of radio is the internet, not on the internet’, ECREA Radio conference, University of Sunderland (London campus), September 2013.
+ ‘It’s radio, but with pictures’, The Radio Conference, University of Bedfordshire, July 2013.
+ Panellist – R@dio em congresso, ISCSP, Lisbon (invited)
+ ‘Radio, podcasting and the long tail’, PCA/ACA, Boston, USA, March 2007.
+ ‘Podcasting and the long tail’, Meccsa/Ampe, Coventry, 2007.
+ ‘Will the the ipod kill the radio star?’ Meccsa/AMPE, Leeds, 2006.
+ ‘Podcasting: how, what, why’, invited paper at BFI media studies conference, 2006.
+ ‘Podcasting’, Radio Studies Conference, Birmingham, 2005.
+ ‘Online learning for radio’, AMPE, Southampton, 2002.

Associated work

Former Member of the Community Media Association (UK) Council
Member of the North East Committee of the Radio Academy
Sterring group member MeCCSA Radio Studies Network
CoChair PodAcademics
List Manager for JISCMail lists – radio-studies & podcast-studies
Reviewer for Academic journals and conferences

I am next speaking at:

Podcast Studies ICA Pre-Conference at Toronto Metropolitain University, Canada