Simon Frith (University of Edinburgh)

Rock sociologist and one of the pioneers of Popular Music studies, Simon Frith was one of the founding members of IASPM in 1981. He has written extensively on the subject of popular music and among his books are The Sociology of rock (1978), Music for Pleasure: Essays on the Sociology of Pop (1988) and Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (1996). He has also participated as editor in several works, such as On Record: Rock, Pop & the Written Word (1990), Sound and Vision: Music Video Reader (1993) and The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (2001). Simon Frith is currently developing a history of music in the United Kingdom to be published by Ashgate. He has been a rock critic for Village Voice and The Sunday Times, and has been a lecturer at the University of Warwick, Strathclyde University, University of Stirling and University of Edinburgh.

Bruce Johnson (Macquarie University)

Bruce Johnson is a specialist in popular music and cultural studies and works specifically on the history of jazz and its diaspora. He has published The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz (1987) and The Inaudible Music: Jazz, Gender and Australian Modernity (2000), and Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence (2008) with Martin Cloonan the book . He has also made several TV documentaries about jazz and has been a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, the University of Turku and the University of New South Wales.

Sara Cohen (University of Liverpool)

Sara Cohen is a music professor at the University of Liverpool and director of the Institute of Popular Music. Sara Cohen’s research explores the relationship between music and urban space. She has published Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making (1991) and Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture: Beyond the Beatles (2007). She has developed several research projects on ethnographic approaches to music and on Popular Music and is a member of the advisory boards of Popular Music and Ethnomusicology Forum.

Francisco Cruces (UNED)

A specialist in musical anthropology and in the study of popular music in the urban environment, Francisco Cruces was one of the first researchers in the field of popular music in Spain. He has co-written Rituales y proceso social (1991), La ciudad emergente (1994), Las culturas musicales (2001), La sonrisa de la institución (2006), Símbolos en la ciudad. Lecturas de antropología urbana (2006) and Textos de antropología contemporánea (2010). He has been a lecturer at the University of Salamanca and at the UNAM, in Mexico, and has developed several research projects about musical anthropology.