Miss Pippa Lang
Contact
- Email: k0937010@kingston.ac.uk
- Location: Kingston School of Art, Knights Park
- Faculty: Kingston School of Art
- School: School of Arts, School of Creative and Cultural Industries
- Department: Department of Performing Arts
- Job market candidate
- Personal website
Research project: In which ways can we understand the significance of heavy metal for female middle-class British youth in the 1970s and 1980s, as Britain rebuilt itself after World War II?
Abstract
As a female Metal fan, journalist and musician since the 1970s, Pippa Lang applies reflexive autoethnography, musicology and feminism to shed light on Metal as tool of both empowerment and belittlement. With reference to her own struggles with gender and patriarchal issues, in particular, she discusses Metal's significant presence during times of alienation from middle-class As a female Metal fan, journalist and musician since the 1970s, Pippa Lang applies reflexive autoethnography, musicology and feminism to shed light on Metal as tool of both empowerment and belittlement. With reference to her own struggles with gender and patriarchal issues, in particular, she discusses Metal's significant presence during times of alienation from middle-class 'War Generation' parents in the 1970s and 1980s (the genre's formative decades); her journalism career as empowered female within a patriarchal context and her own music as epiphanous, cathartic and narrative.
- Research degree: PhD
- Title of project: In which ways can we understand the significance of heavy metal for female middle-class British youth in the 1970s and 1980s, as Britain rebuilt itself after World War II?
- Other research supervisor: Dr Leah Kardos
Biography
I was a music journalist for thirty years (predominantly rock and heavy metal) until starting my BMus in 2009 at the age of 50. During my studies at Kingston (which proceeded to an MMus in 2012), I gave various guest lectures about music journalism, and have also been speaking at conferences. I'm now a part-time Academic Advisor for CASE at Kingston. I have also been a Creative Writing Teacher (my own AE course), biography writer (a book on Queen), PR, band manager and promoter. The highlight of my music journalism career was as Reviews Editor/Executive Editor of Metal Hammer magazine during the 1990s. I'm hoping to become a lecturer at Kingston.
Areas of research interest
- Popular Musicology
- Heavy metal
- Autoethnography
- Subculture
- Nomadism
- Physiological reactions to music
- Musical salience
- Music as ecology
Qualifications
- GCSEs: English Lang, English Lit, Maths, Latin, French, Italian, History
- BMus (2:1): Kingston
- MMus (2:1): Kingston
Publications
A review of last year's HardWired conference in Siegen in the next Metal Music Studies journal.
Many many magazines when I was a journalist, also a book on the band Queen.
Conference papers
Do Problem Music Subcultures (Hip-Hop & Heavy Metal) Cause Deviant Behaviour? (also the topic of my MMus dissertation)
Kingston Uni - Teenage Kicks (Teen Culture): September 2017
Does Heavy Metal - as a 'Problem Music Subculture' - Cause Deviant Behaviour?
Siegen Uni, Germany - HardWired (Heavy Metal Realities): May 2018
Do Problem Music Subcultures Cause Deviant Behaviour?
Reading Uni - Writing The Noise (Popular Music Subcultures): September 2018
Heavy Metal Journalist amongst Punks in the 1980s (Keynote)
Leicester De Montfort Uni - Punk/Metal Hybridity: December 2018