Dylan Young
Musical continuity across Disney's transmedia expansion of Star Wars
I am a part-time PhD student in my second year of study. I have been a member of the music department since 2020 having completed BA Music/Popular Music in 2023, for which I received first class honours, and MA Music and Audiovisual Media in 2024, for which I received a distinction.
My PhD explores the case study which drew me to study at the University of Liverpool in the first place, the music of Star Wars. I place Star Wars at the heart of my analysis of how music interacts with processes of transmedia, critiquing the desire for an arguably unattainable continuity.
This project forms an interdisciplinary approach which incorporates aspects of film musicology, ludomusicology, transmedia studies, and nostalgia studies and allows me to incorporate all aspects of musical research within audiovisual media which have interested me across my undergraduate and master's degrees, drawing on film, TV, video games, animation, children's media, and more.
Teaching and learning
Graduate Teaching Assistant for:
- Introduction to Popular Music History (MUSI140)
- The Film Music of John Williams (MUSI370)
Freelance Academic Support Worker
Outputs
Publications
(2026) '“What Was I Made For?” and “I’m Just Ken”: The Musical
Binary of Barbie' in H. Radner and R. Stringer (eds) Greta Gerwig's Barbie: Popular Culture, Cinema, and Gender. Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 129-142.
Conference Papers
(2025) 'Adapting Music Within Transmedia Franchises: The Immersive Aural World of Star Wars Video Games', Sound on Screen IV., Hybrid virtual conference at Oxford Brookes University, 24-26 June.
(2025) 'Musical Recontextualisation in Transmedia Franchises: Shifting Thematic Meaning in the Star Wars Franchise', BFE/RMA Research Students' Conference, University of Aberdeen, 9-11 January.
(2024) 'Musical Discontinuity and Narrative Disruptions: The Mismatched Themes of the Star Wars Franchise', Sound on Screen III: The Music of Transmedia Franchises, Oxford Brookes University, 3 July.
(2024) 'The Music of Franchise Trailers: Expectations, Disappointments, and the Case of Obi-Wan Kenobi', COSME Screen Convergences: Past, Present, and Futures, University of Liverpool, 1 May.
Supervisors
Dr. Giles Hooper & Dr. Lindsay Carter