![Dr Steven Gamble](https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/files/336954825/gamble_crop2.jpg)
Dr Steven Gamble
BMus (Surrey), MSt (Oxford), PhD (Kingston)
Expertise
I study popular music and the internet, specialising in digital methods and online music cultures. My wider research interests include hip hop, metal, popular music analysis, listening, and power.
Current positions
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow
Department of Music
Contact
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Biography
I studied Music at the University of Surrey and for a Masters in Musicology at Oxford before writing my PhD at Kingston University London, supervised by Prof Emeritus Allan Moore and Prof Isabella van Elferen. My thesis, on empowerment in rap and metal music listening, laid the groundwork for my first monograph How Music Empowers. The book combines theories of embodiment and power alongside popular music analysis to better understand the relationship between listening and social change.
After my doctorate, I developed an academic department to support six practice-oriented undergraduate music and media degrees (accredited by University of Sussex) at BIMM Institute, Brighton. In 2020, I was awarded a MSCA fellowship at University College Cork, which informs my book-in-progress Digital Flows (under contract with Oxford University Press), on internet-based hip hop music and culture.
I started at Bristol in 2022 on a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, researching live online popular music performance: virtual concerts, ‘bedroom’ music livestreamers, and all kinds of digitally mediated performance in-between.
I am a board member and webmaster for the International Society for Metal Music Studies and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies network.
After my doctorate, I developed an academic department to support six practice-oriented undergraduate music and media degrees (accredited by University of Sussex) at BIMM Institute, Brighton. In 2020, I was awarded a MSCA fellowship at University College Cork, which informs my book-in-progress Digital Flows (under contract with Oxford University Press), on internet-based hip hop music and culture.
I started at Bristol in 2022 on a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, researching live online popular music performance: virtual concerts, ‘bedroom’ music livestreamers, and all kinds of digitally mediated performance in-between.
I am a board member and webmaster for the International Society for Metal Music Studies and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies network.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Live from the internet: online popular music performance
Principal Investigator
Description
Online concerts represent an understudied form of popular music performance, exhibiting new possibilities for mediation in a geopolitically challenged ‘offline’ world. I argue they are not merely temporary substitutes for…Managing organisational unit
Department of MusicDates
01/09/2022 to 31/08/2025
Publications
Selected publications
14/03/2021How Music Empowers
How Music Empowers
Recent publications
04/06/2022Hip-hop producer-hosts, beat battles, and online music production communities on Twitch
First Monday
Saturation Season
Popular Music and Society
Listening to virtual space in recorded popular music
Journal of the Art of Record Production
How Music Empowers
How Music Empowers
Empowerment in Rap Music Listening ft. Kendrick Lamar’s “Backseat Freestyle”
On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements