PhD Musings

Being A Punk versus Identifying WITH Punk Something that's come out of a few interviews and which I've now been incorporating into my future interview questions/themes is this idea of being a punk being quite distinct from identifying with punk. It's been interesting seeing whether people see this distinction as relevant to them and how they place themselves within it. At first I wasn't sure how much this related to my original research aims (particularly as I intended to be focusing on age/body with older punk women) but as I did say I was interested in identity then this seems central to this. Sampling I've been thinking more about the limitations of my sampling method recently - in that I am recruiting largely using online social media and perhaps this is cutting out potential participants if they don't use this. I've also been wondering whether I should speak to some younger females punks to act as a point of comparison. Perhaps this will depend on time. But it's something worth thinking more about.

PhD Musings

6-7 months since I last updated this blog and once again vowing to try and be more diligent (ah, the rarely sustained motivation caused by a new year...) I've not been doing a very good job at writing blog posts to act as a PhD diary, well, to be fair I've not done a very good job at writing blog posts full stop. So, some reflections on this academic year so far. 1) Interviews: I have begun collecting data for my PhD through qualitative semi-structured interviewing. To date I've completed three interviews with two more lined up over the next 4-6 weeks. The interviews so far have been a mix of Skype and face-to-face depending on geographical locations of the participants. The Skype ones were not without issues. Technical issues unsuprisingly which resulted in some poor quality recordings and some very tricky (not to mention time consuming) transcribing. The interview itself didn't seem to be greatly impacted by these technical issues however and I felt pretty good about them. I'm going to also be doing some telephone interviews where travel is unfeasible and am reading some secondary literature at the moment regarding modes of interviewing. It would appear there is an absence of literature on telephone interviewing and at times a tendency for it to be presented as inferior to face-to-face. It's interesting because so far my experiences of interviewing over Skype, for example, (which effectively became a telephone interview because of the technical issues) have not seemed secondary to the interview(s) face-to-face. So further reflectioon on this later down the line might be beneficial. 2) Postgraduate Event: As part of the Punk Scholar's Network, I organised with a fellow member a one-day symposium for postgrads in punk. Further details can be seen here. It was quite a full-on day but really enjoyable and good to hear from such a variety of speakers. From this, we've submitted a book proposal to Cambridge Scholars. The collection will be based on papers presented at the event and highlight the bredth and importance of postgraduate work on punk. 3) Publication: The publication for which I wrote a chapter was published so that was really exciting to see. In addition to that I had some poems/collages featured in the independently published Tales from the Punkside - quite different to my usual academic writing! I've submitted a paper to a journal which talks about my ongoing battle with digital ethnography and hopefuly will hear news regarding that soon. I'm determined to make my publication history as strong as possible for life after the PhD(!) 4) Teaching: last semester at uni I got to do some seminar teaching for a sociological theory module. Despite my years of teaching, this was my first HE teaching experience and something I'd been wanting to do for a while as I'm increasingly aware that experience will be needed for HE positions after my PhD. Enjoyed it, though a bit daunting, and eager to get some more experience. It's going to be interesting over the next year or so with my PhD. In the last 6 months we found out we were going to be parents and so with a due date in May I'm aware that there might be time out needed from studies. So, interesting times ahead indeed and possible blog updates of PhD parenting!

Kickstarter: Tales from the Punk Side

Kickstarter for 'Tales from the Punk Side' - a project pulling together voices from within the punk scene. Let's see this come to light!

Four Female Punk Bands...

...that changed women's role in rock

Agreed?

Thinking outside of 'female punk bands'...Lydia Lunch tends to be a prominent feature on similar lists of influential punk females (and technically was also in a band albeit not all female) and I can see why.

For me, Katie Jane Garside was always quite influential when I was younger. I guess it might be hard to see her in the same vein as some of the other punk artists but Daisy Chainsaw gets close. I don't ever really see much wrote about her though in retrospectives concerning female musicians of punk or riotgrrl even.

Rave, Jewish Punks and Female Masturbation

Some interesting pieces on The Guardian today: - the secret history of the UK's 'punky Jews' - images of 90s rave culture - pop music and female masturbation

Post-Youth Punk Women

So as well as trying to be better at updating this blog, I'm now opening it up to include things related to my PhD and perhaps also my sociology teaching. Not that it's going to be that much of a divergence since gender is a prevailing issue within both. I'm in my second year of a part-time PhD in Sociology. The working title is Typical Girls? An Exploration of Post-Youth Punk Women 'Being' and 'Doing' Punk and I want to explore questions such as: How do ageing female punks maintain a punk identity? How is this punk identity expressed? How does a punk identity interact with an ageing identity and life events? What is the relationship between femininity, the body, ageing and 'being punk?' What, if any, significance does the internet/virtual communities hold for post-youth punks?

It's getting to the point now where beginning to actually do research is approaching and a main concern for me is the digital side of the research; how to go about it, whether it's going to be of any use. A second concern is actually finding post-youth punk women who are willing to talk to me! So these are issues I'm thinking about right now. Get in touch with anything you think might be of interest to me.