Patrick Glen

Profile

I joined the University of Leeds as a Teaching Fellow in Cultural Industries in January 2020. In January 2023, I was promoted to Lecturer in Cultural Industries.

I obtained my PhD in History from the University of Sheffield in 2013 before undertaking postdoctoral appointments in History at University College London (2015 and 2017) and the University of Wolverhampton (2018). I have also been a Visiting Lecturer in Music at the University of Salford.

I am a musician signed to a DIY label and I have played in several bands who have been featured in international press, radio and have appeared live in session on BBC6 Music. I have published journalism on music and culture in publications including the Guardian, Loud & Quiet and Tribune.

Responsibilities

• Opportunities and Students Futures Lead

Research interests

My research considers the relationship between institutions in the music industry, popular music audiences, musical practice, journalism, politics, culture and society. Published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change Series in 2019, my book Permissive Social Change and Youth in the British Music Press, 1967–1983 is the first scholarly history of the music press that locates journalists and editors, music papers and their readers within broader debates about youth culture, the cultural industries and ‘permissiveness’.

I am currently researching and writing a second book, Pop, Politics and Moral Panics: Music Festivals and British Society, 1968-76 which will be published by Manchester University Press. The book will be published in 2028. Pop, Politics and Moral Panics considers the pop music festival from 1968 and analyses the subsequent moral panics, political discussions and attempts to regulate and control such festivals up to 1976. Outdoor pop festivals—particularly the Isle of Wight Festival of 1970—caught the attention of the British public, politicians and media sparking controversy over their implications, social and political meaning, and even their existence. To some, festivals were where the ‘permissive’ 1960s and countercultural politics could be experienced and lived. However, voices on the right—including Conservative councillors and Monday Club MPs—saw festivals as a threat to the ‘British way of life’ (alongside non-white immigration, Irish Republicanism and communism). This led to clashes over how music festivals should be regulated that illuminated conflicts within the entertainment industry as well as between right and left, youth and their elders—tensions that continue to resonate today.

I have previously researched the history of British cinema-going in the 1960s and published journal articles that consider cinema-going in relation to youth, counterculture and social change.

Qualifications

• PhD History
• MA Twentieth Century British Cultural History
• BA (Hons) History & Politics

Professional memberships

• Subcultures Network

Student education

I teach and have taught modules concerning theoretical approaches to culture and creativity; popular music and the music industries; social and cultural history of British popular culture; audience research; festivals; arts and activism; cultural policy; research methods; the cultural industries; and collaborative performance. I am happy to supervise PhD researchers working in these fields or with relevance to other themes relevant to culture, media, the arts, culture and society. 

PhD students:

Naomi Burnley