MUSICSTREAM Team
Professor David Hesmondhalgh (he/him) is the Principal Investigator of MUSICSTREAM and Professor of Media, Music and Culture in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. He is the author of a number of books: The Cultural Industries (4th edition, 2019); Culture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour (2015, co-written with Kate Oakley, David Lee and Melissa Nisbett); Why Music Matters (2013); Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (2011, co-written with Sarah Baker); and a book-length report on Music Creators’ Earnings in the Digital Age, for the UK Intellectual Property Office (co-authored with Richard Osborne, Hyojung Sun and Kenny Barr, 2021). He is also editor or co-editor of eight other books or special journal issues on media, music and culture, including a 2014 special issue of Popular Communication (co-edited with Anamik Saha) on Race and Cultural Production; The Media and Social Theory (Routledge, co-edited with Jason Toynbee, 2008) and Media and Society, 6th edition (Bloomsbury, co-edited with James Curran, 2019).
Dr Shuwen Qu (she/her) is an Associate Professor at Jinan University and Co-Investigator on the MUSICSTREAM project. She gained her PhD in Cultural Studies from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2015 with a dissertation entitled Run Deep: The Voice, Authorship and Musicianship of Chinese Female Rock Musicians (1979-2012). She has published several academic journal articles on topics including Chinese female rockers and gender identity, historical discourse mapping of Chinese folk and indie music, and self-releasing and music platformization in China. Her latest piece ‘Music Streaming Platforms and Self-releasing Musicians: The Case of China’, co-authored with David Hesmondhalgh and Jian Xiao, has been published on Information, Communication and Society. Her recent researches explore the digitalization of music industries and its impacts on the music production and consumption, with a particular interest in the issue of everyday music experience and human flourishing/wellbeing, including the studies of karaoke streaming practices and ‘Xiami refugees’ memories.
Dr Raquel Campos Valverde (she/her) is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow covering aspects of the MUSICSTREAM project related to users, experiences, emotions, and pleasures. Before joining the project, she was a Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King’s College London. She obtained her PhD from London South Bank University in 2019 with a thesis entitled Understanding Musicking on Social Media: Music Sharing, Sociality, and Citizenship. Her first article Online musicking for humanity: the role of imagined listening and the moral economies of music sharing on social media has been recently published on Popular Music. Before graduating, she was awarded the 2019 Andrew Goodwin Memorial Postgraduate Prize by the UK and Ireland branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. Her research interests lie at the intersection of Popular Music, Ethnomusicology, and Internet Studies, particularly concerning the user experiences of digital music in online environments.
Dr D. Bondy Valdovinos Kaye (he/they) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Leeds working on MUSICSTREAM (2022-2026). Kaye holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a minor in Music Performance (2014) and a Master of Science in Mass Communications (2016) from Kansas State University (USA). Kaye completed a PhD in Creative Industries in 2021 at Queensland University of Technology (Australia). Kaye’s doctoral research examines music creators and copyright law in Myanmar, interrogating the colonial legacy and power dynamics of copyright in informal media industries. Kaye is the author of TikTok: Creativity and Culture in Short Video (2022, co-written with Jing Zeng and Patrik Wikström), the first scholarly monograph on TikTok published by Polity Press. Kaye has published eleven peer-reviewed journal articles on topics including short video platforms and patriotism in China, media censorship in India, and copyright enforcement on YouTube. From 2014-2019, Kaye was the drummer, bassist, and co-songwriter for the band Parallel Path.
Dr Zhongwei (Mabu) Li (he/him) gained his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science with a dissertation titled Cut-out: Music, Profanity and Subcultural Politics in 1990s China. Mabu has a Bachelor’s in Pedagogy from Beijing Normal University and an MPhil in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining the MUSICSTREAM project, he worked as an LSE Fellow in Media and Communications, teaching and convening a variety of courses on media theories, audience research, and Chinese media cultures. Having previously focused on music, subcultures, and the informal ways of cultural consumption and circulation in 1990s China, Mabu’s current research explores the ruptures and continuities between the contemporary moment of music streaming and music cultures in the past thirty years afforded by different media formats – from physical recording media to downloadable digital files – and their respective ecosystems. His work with the MUSICSTREAM project aims to contextualise this set of changes within broader social, political, and economic transformations on the Chinese path to global capitalist modernity. Outside of academia, Mabu has also been involved in music scenes both in China and in the UK, working with various projects and organizations to bring China’s emerging artists to a wider international stage.
International Advisory Board
University of Leeds Project Affiliates
Richard “Gummo” Clare
Nathan Jackson
Aditya Lal
Jenessa Williams
Music Culture in the Age of Streaming 