About Local Noise

Local Noise is an ARC (Australian Research Council) funded project running since 2005 and led by Dr. Tony Mitchell and Prof. Alastair Pennycook from UTS (University of Technology, Sydney). Its focus is on Australian hip-hop, and the localisation of hip-hop in different cultural, societal and educational contexts. Specifically, the project is interested in the indigenisation of the form, the way in which hip-hop is appropriated and adapted in localised environments, capable of expressing the stories of people in their everyday life. At the same time, Local Noise has been looking at hip-hop as an educational tool, focusing on the phenomenon of the hip-hop workshop, and its success in the face of a general failure of education policies for marginalised groups in society, both in urban and rural settings.

Contact

Please direct all general enquiries to info@localnoise.net.au. If you have a specific question for Tony or Alastair, their email addresses are provided below with their bios.

People

Dr. Tony Mitchell is a senior lecturer in Cultural Studies at UTS with a long-standing interest in popular music and global hip-hop, as well as cultural representations of race and ethnicity. In 2001 Tony edited and compiled the book Global Noise: Rap and Hip Hop outside the USA. Tony’s writings on hip-hop have been published widely, including an article entitled The New Corroboree in the Journal Meanjin in 2006, a piece drawing from Local Noise research into hip-hop in indigenous Australia.

A list of Tony’s published works is available here. Email Tony

Prof. Alastair Pennycook is Professor of Language in Education in the Faculty of Education at UTS, and is particularly well known for his work on the global spread of English, Alastair’s most recent book, dealing with language and global hip-hop, is Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows, published in 2007. Along with Sinfree Makoni, Alastair has also edited another new book, Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages.

A list of Alastair’s work is available here. Email Alastair

Nick Keys, research assistant to Tony, is a graduate of the UTS Writing and Cultural Studies program and has been working with Local Noise since late 2004.

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Astrid Lorange, research assistant to Alastair, is a graduate of the UTS Writing and Cultural Studies program and has been working with Local Noise since early 2006.

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Pat Grant is a graduate from the UTS Writing and Contemporary Cultures program, and completed honours in this degree in 2007. Pat works in many illustrated forms, a selection of which can be viewed at his website.

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Pat Armstrong is responsible for the logo and site design & development (see below for details). He is contactable at somnambulist.org.

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Colophon & Technical Notes

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