Research Profile for Graham St John
Fusion Festival - 2007 . Image by Sam Rowelsky
I am a cultural anthropologist with an interdisciplinary research interest in electronic dance music cultures, alternative music and cultural festivals, the anthropology of performance, ritual and religion, and the study of alternative spiritualities and new religious movements.
I am founding Executive Editor of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture
My current major research projects include:
- Cosmic Alchemy. An investigation of the unique phenomenon of the total solar eclipse, understood as a significant cosmic and social event. The project involves the study of "eclipse chasers" and the music festivals that are held on the "line of totality", celebrated as festivals of global consciousness, and integral to the "visionary arts" movement.
- Global Tribe. An inquiry, beginning in the mid 1990s, on global psytrance culture, critically addressing the integral roles of technology and spirituality 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.
Between 2003-2005 I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. I remain a Research Associate at the CCCS. See Projects.
Books published in the fields of anthropology, cultural, music, media and religious studies. Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance (Equinox, 2012); Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures (Equinox, 2009). My edited collections are: The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (Routledge, 2010), Victor 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).
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