Sarah Mengede
Media and Communication Postgraduate Researcher
Project Title: Feminism, Solidarity & Shared Positionality in Contemporary Rock Journalism: how journalists perpetuate and challenge stereotypical narratives about women rock musicians
Supervisor/s: Professor Karen Ross, Dr Adam Behr
I’m a final-stage PhD student in Media, Culture and Heritage (MCH). I’m also a writer and a guitarist. Alongside my PhD, I have taught seminars in various university departments, including Music, MCH and HaSS. I’m interested in popular music, languages, literature, film, feminism and journalism.
My PhD project, funded by the Northern Bridge Consortium and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), employed a qualitative, feminist approach to examine how music journalists perpetuate and challenge stereotypical narratives about women rock musicians. It involved semi-structured interviews with women rock musicians, journalists, and photographers and a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of magazine articles and images. This triangular research approach provided compelling insights into how musicians, photographers, and journalists perform, construct and resist gender within the constraints of a patriarchal and competitive music industry. My thesis contributes to broader scholarly and public discourses about feminism, misogyny, the media and popular culture amidst and after #MeToo.
I am strongly interested in the creative arts, including playing music, attending concerts, painting, photography, and cinema. In the past, I wrote articles
for small music magazines and blogs, volunteered at various music festivals in Newcastle, and helped organise small concerts in the Northeast of England and Germany.
Moreover, I like to cook and invent new recipes, learn foreign languages, and travel abroad.
Mengede, Sarah (2020) Women Rock! How A North-East Music Blogger Redefines Women’s Role in Rock Music: A Critical Discourse Analysis, Rock Music Studies, 1–1
