Research Profile for Graham St John
Fusion Festival - 2007 . Image by Sam Rowelsky
I am a cultural anthropologist with an interdisciplinary research interest in contemporary youth, techno and dance cultures, the anthropology of ritual and performance, and the sociology of the newest social movements.
Past and ongoing projects include research on global electronic dance music cultures (EDMCs); a study of the role of ‘country’ and ‘reconciliation’ in the re-imagining of Australian identity; the cultural politics of ‘reclamation’ within alter-globalisation movements; and alternative religious movements and counterculture.
I am founding editor of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture
My current major research projects include:
- A study of tension, conflict and change in EDMCs, "Fear and Raving", which addresses governance and innovation in the disputed zones of global dance genres (see projects). The project was supported by Dr Charity Marsh, Canada Research Chair in Interactive Media and Performance at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, where I was recently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
- An inquiry, beginning in the mid 1990s, on global psytrance culture, critically addressing the integral roles of technology and religion within this transnational dance culture movement. The project has been supported by the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia, and The School for Advanced Research in the Human Experience (SAR), Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was a 2006/07 Social Science Research Council/SAR Fellow at the SAR.
In 2006, I was a Research Assistant in the Department of Sociology at City University, London, conducting research for the ESRC funded project 'Anti-War Movements and the Information Age'.
Between 2003-2005 I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. He remains a Research Associate at the CCCS. See Projects.
I have published widely in the fields of anthropology, cultural, youth and religious studies. I recently editedVictor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Performance (Berghahn, 2008), Rave Culture and Religion (Routledge, 2004), and FreeNRG: Notes From the Edge of the Dance Floor (Common Ground, 2001), and have three forthcoming books, including the edited collection The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (Routledge, 2010), and my fully authored books: Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Equinox, 2009), and Global Tribe: Religion, Technology and Psytrance (Blackwell, forthcoming).
Between 2001-2005, I was an Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, as coordinator for Religions, Nature and Culture in Oceania.
From 1993-1999, I conducted doctoral research in Anthropology at Latrobe University, Melbourne. The project investigated Australia's alternative lifestyle festival, ConFest. My PhD thesis, 'Alternative Cultural Heterotopia: ConFest as
For a complete list of publications click here.
Fusion 2007. Image by Sam Rowelsky