Hello, and thanks for visiting.
This website is intended as a space for developing initiatives around the emerging interdisciplinary field of Songwriting Studies. The first of these is our two-year AHRC-funded project, The Songwriting Studies Research Network, which will deliver four themed events across 2019-2020 for people whose work intersects with songwriting in some way, be they scholars, practitioners, industry representatives, or something else entirely.
Our mission is to adopt a holistic approach to the community in order to obtain a better understanding of the scope of contexts and ways in which songwriting is useful, and to use these insights to create opportunities for new conversations, projects and publications. So no matter whether you’re a songwriter, producer, publisher, historian, musicologist, copyright expert, music therapist or protest singer, if you care about your relationship to songs and songwriting, we want to hear from you!
Who are we?
My name is Dr Simon Barber, a Research Fellow from the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research at Birmingham City University, UK. You may also know me as one half of Sodajerker, and the co-creator of the Sodajerker On Songwriting podcast. I’m the principal investigator on the project and my co-investigator is Dr Mike Jones, a fellow songwriter and the Programme Director for MA Music Industry Studies and MA Business of Classical Music at the University of Liverpool. Our project coordinator is Dr Karen Patel, an AHRC Leadership Fellow, also at Birmingham City University.
Get involved
So, how can you help? Here are some of the key ways that you can contribute to shaping our community:
- Sign up for our mailing list and we’ll keep you informed about events and other developments with the network.
- Write a short (300-500 word) guest post for the website introducing your research, a songwriting-related project you are working on, or key ideas you are grappling with in your area of work (here’s an example). You can use the contact form here on the site to get in touch.
- Follow us on Twitter and Instagram and give us a mention in any posts you make about songwriting. We’d be happy to share news, stories, or information about events, projects, reports, articles and books to network members. Our hashtag for everything is #songwritingstudies.
What now?
Register to attend our launch event in Birmingham!
