Biography
Job Title: Academic Manager - School of Popular Music and Voice
Courses Taught: BA (Hons) Music (Popular)
Specialisms: Musicology, Cultural Studies, Genre & Historiography, Metal Studies.
Dr Lewis Kennedy is a Curriculum Manager on the BA (Hons) Music (Popular) programme, coordinating the popular strand of the core Contextual Studies modules. For the 2021/22 academic year, he is also serving as module coordinator for Contextual Studies: Music and Ideology, as well as Final Project: Practice in Context Research Project.
Lewis's research considers the multimodal experience of popular music in the twenty-first century from the perspectives of reception and production. In 2018, he completed a PhD in Music at the University of Hull, writing a thesis on functions of genre in metal and hardcore music. He is the current Treasurer and Membership Officer of the International Society for Metal Music Studies and co-edited the 'Metal & Musicology' special issue of Metal Music Studies journal (2019).
Recent publications include book chapters on NWOAHM and notions of heritage(-making) in metal/hardcore historiography and on the interplay between aidoru and metal themes in the lyrics of Babymetal.
Awards/Releases/Credits/Achievements
Recent Publications:
Kennedy, L. F. (2021) 'Is Kawaii Metal? Exploring Aidoru/Metal Fusion Through the lyrics of Babymetal', in R. Valijärvi, C. Doesburg & A. DiGioia (eds) Multilingual Metal Music: Sociocultural, Linguistic and Literary Perspectives on Heavy Metal Lyrics. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 201-219.
Kennedy, L. F. (2021) 'Intersections of Genre, Heritage, and Place in the New Wave of American Heavy Metal', in L. Maloney & J. Schofield (eds) Music and Heritage: New Perspectives on Place-making and Sonic Identity. London and New York: Roultedge, pp. 126-135.
Kennedy L. F. and Yavuz, M. S. (eds) (2019) 'Metal and Musicology' Special Issue, Metal Music Studies 5 (3).
A full list of publications can be found here.