Gerry Smyth is an academic 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....

 from Dublin, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. He works in the Department of English at Liverpool John Moores University

Liverpool John Moores University

Liverpool John Moores University is a British 'modern' university located in the city of Liverpool, England. The university is named after John Moores and was previously called Liverpool Mechanics' School of Arts and later Liverpool Polytechnic before gaining university status in 1992, thus...

. His early publications were mainly in the field of Irish literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, although since 2002 he has been writing almost exclusively on music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

. Smyth was an early advocate of postcolonial criticism in Irish Studies, although more recently he has been keen to emphasise the autobiographical dimension of critical discourse. Decolonisation and Criticism won the American Conference for Irish Studies’ Michael J. Durkan Prize for best book published in literary criticism, arts criticism or cultural studies in 1999. Beautiful Day: Forty Years of Irish Rock (co-authored with Sean Campbell) was launched in the Clarence Hotel in Dublin in September 2005. Our House: The Representation of Domestic Space in Contemporary Culture (co-edited with Jo Croft) was launched at the Tate

Tate

-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

 Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

 in September 2006. His collection of critical essays Music in Irish Cultural History also won the Michael J. Durkan Prize (2009). Smyth has lectured throughout 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...

 and the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 on various aspects of Irish culture. In September / October 2006 he was Academic-in-Residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco

Monaco

Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...

. He was appointed Visiting Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 between October 2010 and February 2011.
Smyth is currently researching a major study of treason

Treason

In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...

 and betrayal in twentieth-century Irish fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

.

Major publications

• The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction (London: Pluto Press, 1997)
• Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature (London: Pluto Press, 1998)
• Explorations in Cultural History (with T.G. Ashplant) (London: Pluto Press, 2000)
• Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2001)
• Across the Margins: Cultural Identity and Change in the Atlantic Archipelago (co-edited with Glenda Norquay) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002)
• (ed.) Music in Contemporary Ireland: A Special Edition of the Irish Studies Review 12.1 (April 2004)
• Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music (Cork: Cork University Press, 2005)
• Beautiful Day: Forty Years of Irish Rock (with Sean Campbell) (Cork: Atrium Press, 2005)
• Our House: The Representation of Domestic Space in Contemporary Culture (co-edited with Jo Croft) (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006)
• Music in Contemporary British Fiction: Listening to the Novel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2008)
• Music in Irish Cultural History (Dublin and London: Irish Academic Press, 2009)

Under the name Gerry McGowan, Smyth has also released three albums of progressive folk music

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

: The Colour Tree (2003), riverrun (2005) and The Usual Story (2008), and an album of electronic music

Electronic music

Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

entitled Scapes (2009). He is currently completing a multimedia project entitled 'Roll and Go; Songs of Liverpool and the Sea'.