Georgina Born
Encyclopedia
Georgina Born is a British
academic
, anthropologist
and musician
. As a musician she is known as Georgie Born, but in academic circles she does not use the diminutive form.
, she is the granddaughter of the physicist and Nobel laureate Max Born
, daughter of the pharmacologist
Gustav Born
and Ann Plowden-Wardlaw, stepdaughter of the American
theatre director and writer George Mully, and cousin of the pop singer Olivia Newton-John
. She is the partner of social theorist and political geographer Andrew Barry.
and piano
at the Royal College of Music
in London
and performed various kinds of classical and modern music, including stints with the Michael Nyman Band
, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra
and the Flying Lizards. She also studied for a year at the Chelsea School of Art
.
In June 1976 she joined the English
avant-rock group
Henry Cow
as bass guitarist and cellist
, following the departure of founding bassist John Greaves
. Henry Cow was in a period of intensive touring and Born toured Europe with the group for two years.
After Henry Cow, Born performed and recorded with a number of groups and musicians, including Lindsay Cooper
, National Health
, Bruford and Mike Westbrook
, particularly as a cellist in the Westbrook Orchestra. Her playing is prominent on Westbrook's album, The Cortege. Late in 1977, Born, Lindsay Cooper
, Sally Potter
and Maggie Nichols
founded the Feminist Improvising Group
. She also recorded with The Raincoats
, and played improvised music with Lol Coxhill
, Steve Beresford
, David Toop
and others as a member of the London Musicians' Collective
.
In the 1980s she was an occasional member of Derek Bailey's Company
and played cello and bass guitar on numerous soundtracks for television and film for composers Lindsay Cooper and Mike Westbrook (including the soundtrack for the 1980 Stephen Poliakoff
play Caught on a Train
). She had a walk-on part in Sally Potter's 1983 film The Gold Diggers.
, gaining her BSc in 1982 and her PhD (supervised by Michael Gilsenan and Michael Rowlands) in 1989. Her first academic job (1986–89) was in the Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University
, where she assisted Roger Silverstone in setting up the degree in Communication and Information Studies. Born moved to a lectureship in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths' College London (1989–97), where she worked alongside Dick Hebdige
.
. In 2000 she was appointed to a Lectureship, in 2003 to Reader in Sociology, Anthropology and Music, and in 2006 to Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at Cambridge, a title that recognises her interdisciplinary contributions.
At Cambridge Born teaches the sociology and anthropology of culture, media and music and ethnographic method in the Department of Sociology. She is responsible for the only dedicated lecture course on contemporary media in the social sciences.
Born is a member of Cambridge's Screen Media Group, which in 2006 launched Cambridge's first cross-Schools Masters degree, Screen Media and Cultures. Born founded and directs the Cambridge Media Research Group which runs a seminar series and related events. In 2005 she organised a conference at Cambridge on the legacy of Laura Mulvey
's notable essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
".
Between 1996 and 1998 Born was a visiting professor in the Institute of Musicology at the University of Aarhus
, and from 1997 to 1998 Senior Research Fellow at King's College, Cambridge
. From 1998 to 2006 she was Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge
. Born is Honorary Professor of Anthropology at University College London
and a Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University
. She is also a Fellow of the Australian Cultural Sociology Association and of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.
Born uses ethnography
to study cultural production, particularly music, television and information technologies, and is a leading exponent both of institutional ethnography and of anthropology's application to the critical study of Western modernity. In relation to music, television and IT her work has ranged from studies of cultural production and cultural politics, to intellectual property, authorship and subjectivity, to materiality, technology and mediation. She is an international authority on computer music and musical modernism in the twentieth century, and also on contemporary media policy, the BBC
and public service broadcasting
in the United Kingdom
and Europe
.
Born's earlier research involved anthropological and sociological studies of art and popular musics. Her first book, Rationalising Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalisation of the Musical Avant-Garde, combined ethnography with cultural history in an analysis of the crisis in twentieth century art music through the example of IRCAM
, the computer music research institute founded by Pierre Boulez
. The book (edited with David Hesmondhalgh) Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music (2000) integrates approaches from musicology, anthropology and post-colonial theory to address how music can be employed to represent social identities and cultural differences, and the techniques whereby both art and popular musics appropriate other musics.
Born's second ethnography, Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC (Secker and Warburg, 2004; Vintage, 2005), is the most extensive inside study of the BBC ever carried out and gives the definitive analysis of the transformation of the BBC in the past decade. It describes the effects on the corporation of Director General John Birt’s implementation of the ‘new public management’: marketization and market research, audit and accountability procedures – all intended to boost efficiency and increase the BBC’s democratic functioning by effecting greater responsiveness to its audiences. The study therefore represents one of the most detailed accounts of the impact of commercial management techniques on Britain's public sector. Derived from fieldwork in the mid-1990s and the early 2000s mainly conducted within the corporation's Drama, Documentary, News and Current Affairs departments, the book adds substance to claims that the BBC has moved towards a market orientation to the detriment of its public service remit. Born argues that this resulted from a combination of the imposition of neo-liberal policies and wider changes in the British and international broadcasting ecology.
In 2001–02 Born made a study of the digital strategies of the BBC and Channel Four
, Britain's main public service broadcasters, which showed that Channel Four was being driven primarily by commercialism and had drifted seriously from its public service remit for innovation and diversity. She has subsequently written both policy interventions and normative essays on the changing nature of public service broadcasting with the advent of digital media. Born was invited in 2005 to give written and oral evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on BBC Charter Review, and has lectured to public service broadcasters in Europe and Australia as well as to broadcasting and journalist trade unions in Britain and Europe.
Between 2004 and 2006 Born was involved in research (with Marilyn Strathern
and Andrew Barry) on interdisciplinarity in knowledge and cultural production, in which she carried out case studies of the use of ethnography by the IT industry, and on art-science and new media art. Born has developed an interdisciplinary approach – using anthropology, sociology, musicology and the arts – to theorising cultural and media production that builds on and extends the work of Pierre Bourdieu
, one that integrates aesthetics and history with social scientific perspectives. She has published a number of papers in scientific journal
s, including Social Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, American Anthropologist, Journal of Material Culture, Screen, Cultural Values, Javnost, The Political Quarterly, Media, Culture and Society, New Formations and Twentieth Century Music. She is on the editorial boards of Anthropological Theory, Cultural Sociology and New Media and Society, and has been on the editorial boards of Popular Music, Free Associations and Journal of the Royal Musical Society.
In 2010 Born and Dr. Ben Walton (a University lecturer in the faculty of music at Cambridge) piloted a Mellon-funded interdisciplinary graduate seminar series on 'Music and Society' at Cambridge University's Centre for Research on Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. This series was open to both graduates in sociology and graduates in musicology and attempted to provide interdisciplinary discussion covering 'a range of subjects that explore music's place and functions within diverse social environments'.
With National Health
With Henry Cow
With Bruford
With Stormy Six
With Mike Westbrook
With Lindsay Cooper
With News from Babel
With Peter Blegvad
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
academic
Academia
Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
, anthropologist
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
and musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
. As a musician she is known as Georgie Born, but in academic circles she does not use the diminutive form.
Background
Born in Wheatley, OxfordshireWheatley, Oxfordshire
Wheatley is a village and civil parish in Oxfordshire, about east of Oxford.-Archaeology:There was a Roman villa on Castle Hill, about southeast of the parish church. It was excavated in 1845, when Roman coins dating from AD 260 to 378 and fragments of Roman pottery and Roman tiles were...
, she is the granddaughter of the physicist and Nobel laureate Max Born
Max Born
Max Born was a German-born physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s...
, daughter of the pharmacologist
Pharmacology
Pharmacology is the branch of medicine and biology concerned with the study of drug action. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function...
Gustav Born
Gustav Victor Rudolf Born
Gustav Victor Rudolf Born is Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology at King's College London and Research Professor at the William Harvey Research Institute, St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College....
and Ann Plowden-Wardlaw, stepdaughter of the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
theatre director and writer George Mully, and cousin of the pop singer Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John
Olivia Newton-John AO, OBE is a singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA...
. She is the partner of social theorist and political geographer Andrew Barry.
Music
Born studied celloCello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
and piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
at the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and performed various kinds of classical and modern music, including stints with the Michael Nyman Band
Michael Nyman Band
The Michael Nyman Band, formerly known as the Campiello Band, is a group formed as a street band for a 1976 production of Carlo Goldoni's 1756 play, Il Campiello directed by Bill Bryden at the Old Vic...
, the Penguin Cafe Orchestra
Penguin Cafe Orchestra
The Penguin Cafe Orchestra was a collective of performing musicians created by classically trained British guitarist, composer and arranger Simon Jeffes...
and the Flying Lizards. She also studied for a year at the Chelsea School of Art
Chelsea College of Art and Design
Chelsea College of Art and Design, the erstwhile Chelsea School of Art, is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation...
.
In June 1976 she joined the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
avant-rock group
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
Henry Cow
Henry Cow
Henry Cow were an English avant-rock group, founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler and bassoonist/oboist Lindsay Cooper were important long-term members...
as bass guitarist and cellist
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
, following the departure of founding bassist John Greaves
John Greaves (musician)
John Greaves is a British bass guitarist and composer, best known as a member of Henry Cow and his collaborative albums with Peter Blegvad...
. Henry Cow was in a period of intensive touring and Born toured Europe with the group for two years.
After Henry Cow, Born performed and recorded with a number of groups and musicians, including Lindsay Cooper
Lindsay Cooper
Lindsay Cooper is an English bassoon and oboe player, composer and political activist. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians...
, National Health
National Health
National Health were a progressive rock band associated with the Canterbury scene. Founded in 1975, the band included members of keyboardist Dave Stewart's band Hatfield and the North and Alan Gowen's band Gilgamesh, the band also included guitarists Phil Miller and Phil Lee and bassist Mont...
, Bruford and Mike Westbrook
Mike Westbrook
Michael John David 'Mike' Westbrook is an English jazz pianist, composer, and writer of orchestrated jazz pieces.-Early work:Mike Westbrook grew up in Torquay...
, particularly as a cellist in the Westbrook Orchestra. Her playing is prominent on Westbrook's album, The Cortege. Late in 1977, Born, Lindsay Cooper
Lindsay Cooper
Lindsay Cooper is an English bassoon and oboe player, composer and political activist. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians...
, Sally Potter
Sally Potter
Charlotte Sally Potter is an English film director and screenwriter.-Career:Having left school at sixteen to become a filmmaker, Potter joined the London Film-Makers' Co-op and started making experimental short films, including Jerk and Play...
and Maggie Nichols
Maggie Nicols
Maggie Nicols , is a Scottish free-jazz and improvising vocalist, dancer, and performer.-Early life and career:...
founded the Feminist Improvising Group
Feminist Improvising Group
The Feminist Improvising Group were a five- to eight-piece English free improvising avant-garde jazz and avant-rock ensemble formed in London in 1977...
. She also recorded with The Raincoats
The Raincoats
The Raincoats are a British post-punk band. Ana da Silva and Gina Birch formed the group in 1977 while they were students at Hornsey College of Art, London, England.-Career:...
, and played improvised music with Lol Coxhill
Lol Coxhill
Lowen Coxhill, generally known as Lol Coxhill is a free improvising saxophonist and raconteur...
, Steve Beresford
Steve Beresford
Steve Beresford is a British musician who graduated from the University of York. He has played a variety of instruments, including piano, trumpet, euphonium, double-bass and a wide variety of toy instruments, such as the toy piano. He has also played a wide range of music...
, David Toop
David Toop
David Toop is an English musician and author, and as of 2001 was visiting Research Fellow in the Media School at London College of Communication. He was notably a member of The Flying Lizards. He was a prominent contributor to the British magazine The Face. He is a regular contributor to The Wire,...
and others as a member of the London Musicians' Collective
London Musicians Collective
The London Musicians' Collective is a cultural charity based in London, England devoted to the promotion of contemporary, experimental and improvised music...
.
In the 1980s she was an occasional member of Derek Bailey's Company
Company (free improvisation group)
Company was an ever changing collection of free improvising musicians. The concept was devised by guitarist Derek Bailey in order to create challenging and artistically stimulating combinations of players who might not otherwise have had an opportunity to work together.At various times Company has...
and played cello and bass guitar on numerous soundtracks for television and film for composers Lindsay Cooper and Mike Westbrook (including the soundtrack for the 1980 Stephen Poliakoff
Stephen Poliakoff
Stephen Poliakoff, CBE, FRSL is an acclaimed British playwright, director and scriptwriter, widely judged amongst Britain's foremost television dramatists.-Early life and career:...
play Caught on a Train
Caught on a Train
Caught On A Train is a British television play written by Stephen Poliakoff and directed by Peter Duffell, based on an overnight train journey across Europe, and following the route of a journey Poliakoff had himself made from London to Vienna...
). She had a walk-on part in Sally Potter's 1983 film The Gold Diggers.
Academia
Born studied anthropology at University College LondonUniversity College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
, gaining her BSc in 1982 and her PhD (supervised by Michael Gilsenan and Michael Rowlands) in 1989. Her first academic job (1986–89) was in the Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University
Brunel University
Brunel University is a public research university located in Uxbridge, London, United Kingdom. The university is named after the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel....
, where she assisted Roger Silverstone in setting up the degree in Communication and Information Studies. Born moved to a lectureship in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths' College London (1989–97), where she worked alongside Dick Hebdige
Dick Hebdige
Richard "Dick" Hebdige is an expatriate British media theorist and sociologist most commonly associated with the study of subcultures, and its resistance against the mainstream of society.-Life and career:...
.
Cambridge
In 1997 she moved to an Assistant Lectureship in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of CambridgeUniversity of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. In 2000 she was appointed to a Lectureship, in 2003 to Reader in Sociology, Anthropology and Music, and in 2006 to Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at Cambridge, a title that recognises her interdisciplinary contributions.
At Cambridge Born teaches the sociology and anthropology of culture, media and music and ethnographic method in the Department of Sociology. She is responsible for the only dedicated lecture course on contemporary media in the social sciences.
Born is a member of Cambridge's Screen Media Group, which in 2006 launched Cambridge's first cross-Schools Masters degree, Screen Media and Cultures. Born founded and directs the Cambridge Media Research Group which runs a seminar series and related events. In 2005 she organised a conference at Cambridge on the legacy of Laura Mulvey
Laura Mulvey
Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London...
's notable essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Feminist film theory
Feminist film theory is theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analysed and their theoretical underpinnings.-History:...
".
Between 1996 and 1998 Born was a visiting professor in the Institute of Musicology at the University of Aarhus
University of Aarhus
Aarhus University , located in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, is Denmark's second oldest and second largest university...
, and from 1997 to 1998 Senior Research Fellow at King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
. From 1998 to 2006 she was Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...
. Born is Honorary Professor of Anthropology at University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
and a Fellow of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. She is also a Fellow of the Australian Cultural Sociology Association and of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.
Born uses ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
to study cultural production, particularly music, television and information technologies, and is a leading exponent both of institutional ethnography and of anthropology's application to the critical study of Western modernity. In relation to music, television and IT her work has ranged from studies of cultural production and cultural politics, to intellectual property, authorship and subjectivity, to materiality, technology and mediation. She is an international authority on computer music and musical modernism in the twentieth century, and also on contemporary media policy, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and public service broadcasting
Public broadcasting
Public broadcasting includes radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing and commercial financing.Public broadcasting may be...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
Born's earlier research involved anthropological and sociological studies of art and popular musics. Her first book, Rationalising Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalisation of the Musical Avant-Garde, combined ethnography with cultural history in an analysis of the crisis in twentieth century art music through the example of IRCAM
IRCAM
IRCAM is a European institute for science about music and sound and avant garde electro-acoustical art music. It is situated next to, and is organizationally linked with, the Centre Pompidou in Paris...
, the computer music research institute founded by Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
. The book (edited with David Hesmondhalgh) Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music (2000) integrates approaches from musicology, anthropology and post-colonial theory to address how music can be employed to represent social identities and cultural differences, and the techniques whereby both art and popular musics appropriate other musics.
Born's second ethnography, Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC (Secker and Warburg, 2004; Vintage, 2005), is the most extensive inside study of the BBC ever carried out and gives the definitive analysis of the transformation of the BBC in the past decade. It describes the effects on the corporation of Director General John Birt’s implementation of the ‘new public management’: marketization and market research, audit and accountability procedures – all intended to boost efficiency and increase the BBC’s democratic functioning by effecting greater responsiveness to its audiences. The study therefore represents one of the most detailed accounts of the impact of commercial management techniques on Britain's public sector. Derived from fieldwork in the mid-1990s and the early 2000s mainly conducted within the corporation's Drama, Documentary, News and Current Affairs departments, the book adds substance to claims that the BBC has moved towards a market orientation to the detriment of its public service remit. Born argues that this resulted from a combination of the imposition of neo-liberal policies and wider changes in the British and international broadcasting ecology.
In 2001–02 Born made a study of the digital strategies of the BBC and Channel Four
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, Britain's main public service broadcasters, which showed that Channel Four was being driven primarily by commercialism and had drifted seriously from its public service remit for innovation and diversity. She has subsequently written both policy interventions and normative essays on the changing nature of public service broadcasting with the advent of digital media. Born was invited in 2005 to give written and oral evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on BBC Charter Review, and has lectured to public service broadcasters in Europe and Australia as well as to broadcasting and journalist trade unions in Britain and Europe.
Between 2004 and 2006 Born was involved in research (with Marilyn Strathern
Marilyn Strathern
Dame Ann Marilyn Strathern, DBE, FBA is a British anthropologist who was Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge from 1998 until her retirement in 2009...
and Andrew Barry) on interdisciplinarity in knowledge and cultural production, in which she carried out case studies of the use of ethnography by the IT industry, and on art-science and new media art. Born has developed an interdisciplinary approach – using anthropology, sociology, musicology and the arts – to theorising cultural and media production that builds on and extends the work of Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
, one that integrates aesthetics and history with social scientific perspectives. She has published a number of papers in scientific journal
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
s, including Social Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, American Anthropologist, Journal of Material Culture, Screen, Cultural Values, Javnost, The Political Quarterly, Media, Culture and Society, New Formations and Twentieth Century Music. She is on the editorial boards of Anthropological Theory, Cultural Sociology and New Media and Society, and has been on the editorial boards of Popular Music, Free Associations and Journal of the Royal Musical Society.
In 2010 Born and Dr. Ben Walton (a University lecturer in the faculty of music at Cambridge) piloted a Mellon-funded interdisciplinary graduate seminar series on 'Music and Society' at Cambridge University's Centre for Research on Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. This series was open to both graduates in sociology and graduates in musicology and attempted to provide interdisciplinary discussion covering 'a range of subjects that explore music's place and functions within diverse social environments'.
Oxford
In 2010 Born was awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council for a major programme of research on the transformation of music by digital media. Subsequently she moved to become Professor of Music and Anthropology at the University of Oxford.Discography
With Art BearsArt Bears
Art Bears were an English avant-rock group formed during the disassembly of Henry Cow in 1978 by three of its members, Chris Cutler , Fred Frith and Dagmar Krause...
- Hope and FearsHopes and Fears (Art Bears album)Hopes and Fears is the debut album by the English avant-rock group Art Bears. It comprises tracks by Henry Cow, Art Bears's predecessor, recorded at Sunrise Studios, Kirchberg in Switzerland in January 1978, and tracks by Art Bears, recorded at Kaleidophon Studios in London in March...
(1978)
With National Health
National Health
National Health were a progressive rock band associated with the Canterbury scene. Founded in 1975, the band included members of keyboardist Dave Stewart's band Hatfield and the North and Alan Gowen's band Gilgamesh, the band also included guitarists Phil Miller and Phil Lee and bassist Mont...
- Of Queues and CuresOf Queues and CuresOf Queues and Cures is the second album recorded by the progressive rock and jazz fusion group National Health, one of the last representatives of the artistically prolific Canterbury scene.-Track listing:...
(1978)
With Henry Cow
Henry Cow
Henry Cow were an English avant-rock group, founded at Cambridge University in 1968 by multi-instrumentalists Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. Henry Cow's personnel fluctuated over their decade together, but drummer Chris Cutler and bassoonist/oboist Lindsay Cooper were important long-term members...
- Western CultureWestern Culture (album)Western Culture is an album by English avant-rock group Henry Cow, recorded at Sunrise Studios in Kirchberg, Switzerland in January, July and August 1978. It was their last album and was released on Henry Cow's own private label, Broadcast, in 1979. Later editions appeared on Interzone in the US...
(1979) - The 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box SetThe 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box SetThe 40th Anniversary Henry Cow Box Set is a nine-CD plus one-DVD limited edition box set by English avant-rock group Henry Cow, and was released by RēR Megacorp in January 2009. It consists of over 10 hours of previously unreleased recordings made between 1972 and 1978 from concerts, radio...
(2009, 9xCD+DVD, Recommended RecordsRecommended RecordsRecommended Records is a British independent record label and distribution network founded by Chris Cutler in March 1978. RēR features largely "Rock in Opposition" and related music, but it also distributes selected music released on other independent labels.In 1982 Cutler established November...
, U.K.United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
)
With Bruford
- Gradually Going TornadoGradually Going TornadoGradually Going Tornado is the third and final studio album by Bruford. It was co-produced by Weather Report collaborator Ron Malo and released in 1980 . In contrast to the band's previous all-instrumental effort, several songs were sung by bassist Jeff Berlin...
(1980)
With Stormy Six
Stormy Six
Stormy Six were an Italian progressive and folk rock band founded in Milan in 1966. They performed and recorded until 1983, mostly as a sextet but occasionally as a quartet, a quintet and a septet. Although their line-up changed considerably over the years, founding member Franco Fabbri remained...
- Macchina Maccheronica (1980)
With Mike Westbrook
Mike Westbrook
Michael John David 'Mike' Westbrook is an English jazz pianist, composer, and writer of orchestrated jazz pieces.-Early work:Mike Westbrook grew up in Torquay...
- Bright as Fire (1980)
- The Cortege (1982)
- On Duke's Birthday (1989)
With Lindsay Cooper
Lindsay Cooper
Lindsay Cooper is an English bassoon and oboe player, composer and political activist. Best known for her work with the band Henry Cow, she was also a member of Comus, National Health, News from Babel and David Thomas and the Pedestrians...
- Rags (1981)
- The Golddiggers – original soundtrack to the film The Gold Diggers by Sally PotterSally PotterCharlotte Sally Potter is an English film director and screenwriter.-Career:Having left school at sixteen to become a filmmaker, Potter joined the London Film-Makers' Co-op and started making experimental short films, including Jerk and Play...
(1983) - Music for Other Occasions (1986)
With News from Babel
News from Babel
News from Babel were an English avant-rock group founded in 1983 by Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins and Dagmar Krause. They made two studio albums with several guest musicians and disbanded in 1986.-History:...
- Work Resumed on the TowerWork Resumed on the TowerWork Resumed on the Tower is a 1984 studio album by English avant-rock group News from Babel. It was recorded at Tim Hodgkinson's Cold Storage Recording Studios in Brixton, London, in October and November 1983, and released in 1984. It was their debut album and included guest vocalist Phil Minton...
(1984)
With Peter Blegvad
Peter Blegvad
Peter Blegvad is an American musician, singer-songwriter, and cartoonist. He was a founding member of the avant-pop band Slapp Happy, which later merged briefly with Henry Cow, and has released many solo and collaborative albums...
- The Naked Shakespeare (1983)
External links
- Profile at University of Cambridge
- Faculty Fellows – Georgina Born. The Center for Cultural Sociology.
- Mediating Cultural Politics: A Dialogue with Georgina Born. Conversations in Culture and the Media.