The Music Memory and Narrative Research Group was founded in 2018 as the Music Memoir Research Group, following the highly successful ‘You’re Twisting My Memory’ conference. The group changed its name in 2024 to reflect the growing scope of the group’s research.
The Music, Memory and Narrative Research Group provides a unique look at the construction of social, cultural and life narratives from popular music. The group also examines the contemporary cultural phenomenon of the music memoir and, leading from this, the way that music is used to construct memory.
Scholars in literature, creative writing, musicology and cultural history are collaborating in a growing interdisciplinary field. Research is developing new critical models and methodologies for analysis while practitioners are shaping performance and composition through knowing references to cultural memory.
This research group seeks to work with and support a range of interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners interested in the expanding range of music narratives and textual representations of music and their relationship to individual and collective experience.
Get in touch
We collaborate with colleagues at other universities, and we are keen to hear from researchers interested in further interdisciplinary and cross form collaboration on any aspect of music, memory and music narratives.
We are interested in enquiries from prospective PhD candidates examining project proposals looking at textual discussion and representations of popular music in critical and/or creative forms. We are particularly interested in music memoir, music narratives, music and memory, music spaces, regionality, and nostalgia but we would be happy to discuss any proposals.
Follow us on X (formerly known as Twitter) for more information: @musicmemoirysju
Please contact:
Dr Fraser Mann – f.mann@yorksj.ac.uk
Professor Robert Edgar – r.edgar@yorksj.ac.uk
