Professor Sara Cohen BA, DPhil

I have specialised in interdisciplinary research on popular music, broadly defined, but with a particular interest in the anthropology of music. The research has involved diverse groups and organisations and encompassed a wide range of themes and issues. There has nevertheless been a focus on questions concerning place and migration, heritage and memory, age and ageing. I am currently leading a project on migration and identity in collaboration with place-based Chilean, Yemeni and Ukrainian communities, and a team of researchers from various academic disciplines

My first monograph, Rock Culture in Liverpool, was published in 1991 by Oxford University Press and reprinted in 2004. It drew on ethnographic research with rock musicians to explore tensions between creativity and commerce. The second, Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture, was published by Ashgate in 2007 and explored music and urban change through a case study on Liverpool and comparative research conducted in other cities. I have authored numerous journal articles and book chapters, and am co-author of Harmonious Relations (1991) and Liverpool’s Musical Landscapes (2018), and co-editor of Sites of Popular Music Heritage (2014) and Troubling Inheritances (2022).

I have led a series of major research projects supported by various funding bodies, including the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Humanities in the European Research Area JRP, the Australia Research Council, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

My research has been largely collaborative and I have led projects involving partnerships with a wide range of non-academic groups and organisations, including museums and galleries, governing bodies and heritage managers, film and media companies, music businesses and associations, and community arts organisations.