Dr Simon McKerrell

Reader in Music and Society

  • Email: simon.mckerrell@ncl.ac.uk
  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 5609
  • Personal Website: www.simonmckerrell.com
  • Address: Dr Simon McKerrell
    Reader in Music and Society
    International Centre for Music Studies (ICMuS)
    Armstrong Building
    Newcastle University
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background

 

Dr Simon McKerrell is interested in the social impact of music and the creative industries. Current research focuses upon music in the creative economy in rural areas, and taking an interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach to the relationship between culture and policy. He is the author of Focus: Scottish Traditional Music (Routledge), and the Co-Editor of both Music as Multimodal Discourse: Media, Power and Protest (Bloomsbury) and Understanding Scotland Musically: Folk, Tradition, Modernity (Routledge). He has served as Head of Music, as Associate Dean for Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and is currently Head of Postgraduate Studies in Music.

He has previously held positions at the Universities of Sheffield, Glasgow and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and The National Piping Centre in Glasgow. He was Co-I on the EU funded international research project Critical Heritages (CoHERE): performing and representing Identities in Europe (2.5€ million), in 2014-15 he was PI for the AHRC project Understanding Scotland Musically (£68,000) and was concurrently a Co-Investigator for a Scottish Government Social Research project entitled Community Experiences of Sectarianism (£73,000). During 2020-21 will be an AHRC leadership fellow on a project entitled Music in the Rural Creative Economy. 

In 2016, along with Dr Simon Keegan-Phipps he was the founding Co-Editor of The International Journal of Traditional Arts (www.tradartsjournal.org). He is currently the Chair of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology www.bfe.org.uk. In addition to this, Simon is an expert performer of Highland and Uilleann bagpiping, having recorded 11 commercial albums and taught throughout the world. He is also a slightly less useful tenor banjo player (but keen). 

Qualifications

2012 Certificate of Advanced Studies in Academic Practice (HEA accredited)  

2005 PhD, St. Andrews University/RCS

2000 BA (Scottish Music) Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Google Scholar: Click here.

Research

Research Interests

My research focuses upon the social impact of music. Much of my research has revolved around cultural policy, traditional music and the social agency of music for division and belonging. I am currently focusing upon music in the creative economy in rural areas, taking an interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach to answer the question: How best can we support musical micro-enterprises in the rural creative economy? This project forms the basis for an AHRC Leadership Fellowship during 2020-21 and is focused upon culture, social capital and policy in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. I maintain an interest in music and social conflict, specifically around sectarianism in Scotland and how music and culture perform and combat social conflict.


The Music in the Rural Creative Economy project focuses upon how best to support sustainable musical micro-enterprises in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Cultural policy research in recent decades has focused upon urban settings, both because of the growth of cities, and the desire to conjoin the creative economy with urban regeneration. Micro-enterprises, despite being the most common business in the creative economy rarely feature in research literature and the vast majority of the literature serves the urban, metropolitan creative economy based largely on Floridian notions of proximity. This research offers a unique case study examining musical micro-enterprises in the rural creative economy of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Fieldwork with a representative sample of promoters, performers, festival organizers, tour operators, music tutors, recording studios and instrument makers in the Highlands and Islands will focus upon how best to support their services and products and their contribution to social capital in rural Scotland. This study will take a mixed methods approach with ethnomusicological fieldwork and quantitative analysis to explore how connecting enterprises, artists, residents and local government might be able to support more sustainable and integrated approaches to small and partial artistic livelihoods in the rural creative economy. 



I was Co-I on the EU Horizon grant CoHere, which addressed an intensifying EU Crisis through a study of relations between identities and representations and performances of history, including music as intangible cultural heritage. I was also the lead academic on an AHRC postdoctoral fellowship with Dr Jasmine Hornabrook examining the rural creative economy in Argyll and Bute throughout 2018. In 2014-15 I completed an AHRC Early Career Fellowship entitled Understanding Scotland Musically and some of the research from this project has been published in a book for Routledge on Scottish traditional music employing various ethnomusicological, media and discourse analysis methods of analysis entitled Focus: Scottish Traditional Music.



I was the Arts & Cultures Theme lead for the Newcastle University Institute for Social Renewal which was an extremely productive and exciting cross-university role. My blog is available here

 

Other Expertise

Simon McKerrell is an expert performer of Highland-, Border- and Uilleann-pipes and has recorded 11 commercial albums. He has toured, taught and performed throughout the world and was a founding member of the band Back of the Moon, Rough Tides, The Sprit of Scotland Pipe Band (http://www.spiritofscotlandpipeband.com/) and La Banda Europa (www.labandaeuropa.com). For more information and discography see: Simon McKerrell's Discography. 

 

Postgraduate Supervision

I am interested in supervising research students working on any aspect of music and policy and the social impact of music.

I have served as an external doctoral examiner at the Universities of Ulster, Sheffield, KCL, Cardiff, Durham and UHI, and as the external undergraduate examiner at the University of the Highlands and Islands distance learning BA Applied Music and MA Music and the Environment programmes from 2012-2016.



 

 

Teaching

Simon McKerrell has interests in open educational resources and has been pursuing a number of open, online educational initiatives at Newcastle University including the open wiki for the course Issues in Popular Music Culture, assisted by Dr Matthew Ord.


Key areas of teaching: music and culture, sociolog(ies) of music, ethnomusicology, Scottish music, with a strong interest in blended and distance learning.

 

Newcastle University Teaching-related Roles and Responsibilities

 

• Head of Postgraduate Studies and Chair of PG Board of Examiners in Music (2019-).

• Degree Programme Director for Masters in Music (2019-).

• Head of Music, Newcastle University and Chair of UG Board of Examiners in Music (2015-17)

• Independent Chair for doctoral examinations at Newcastle (2017-) and external examiner for various PhDs around the UK

• Member of University-wide Alcohol Awareness Committee (2011-15) and E-Learning Action Group (2013-16)

• Degree Programme Director (2012-13) for the BMus Folk and Traditional Music degree


Publications