Dr David Wilkinson awarded a British Academy Small Grant for a project entitled 'Countercultural Media in the British Regions: Politics, Legacies and Place'

Dr David Wilkinson is lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University.

David is Lecturer in English and he specialises in the area of popular musical and subcultural studies. His research considers countercultural legacies in Britain. David wants to know why we should care about movements like post-punk, for instance. How were they bound up with the political shifts of their eras? What can we learn from the ways they were produced and received? How did factors like class and education play a part? And whose interests are served by the ways that popular music and subcultures get represented, remembered and reworked - in literature, film and other cultural forms? 

These questions inform his monograph Post-Punk, Politics and Pleasure in Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). They also guide his current research into how countercultural legacies inform contemporary culture and politics, from hipsters to urban regeneration. In turn, this feeds into David's teaching on modules such as Manchester and the City.

Beyond popular music and subcultures, David is also interested in urban studies and cultural theory.