Alan O’Connor

Professor Alan O'Connor
BA (Trinity College, Dublin), MA, PhD (York)

aoconnor@trentu.ca
Durham Campus, Room 164
705-748-1011 ext. 5030

Alan O'Connor holds a degree in Sociology from Trinity College, Dublin, studied at York for his MA and PhD, and taught at Simon Fraser before coming to Trent. His research field is popular culture and media.

He has a particular interest in alternative community media and how they become the means for the expression of group and subcultural identities. This interest, which represents the expansion of cultural studies to a global context, takes him from Toronto, where he founded the countercultural café Who's Emma? to Central and South America where he has participated in community political action.

Alan O'Connor's new book on Punk Record Labels and the Struggle for Autonomy is now available through Lexington Books. He is also author of The Voice of the Mountains: Radio and Anthropology (2006), Raymond Williams - Key Thinkers in Critical Media Studies (2005), and editor and translator of Community Radio in Bolivia: The Miner's Radio Stations (2004).

His current research, with Ian Mclachlan, is a book on the underground arts scene in Peterborough since 1970. This research is influenced by Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of cultural fields, and documents the extraordinary richness of community theatre, art and music in this small city. With start-up funding from the Symons Foundation, the research is currently focusing on The Union (1989-1996), a collectively-run space in downtown Peterborough for community theatre, and part of the underground touring circuit for hardcore punk bands in the 1990's.

Check out: http://alanoconnor.wordpress.com/