Dr Kevin Milburn lectures in British Music History at NYUL, where he also teaches on the Music Business New Student Seminar course. Since 2017, Kevin has worked at London South Bank University, where he is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies and Course Leader for undergraduate Town Planning courses. Previously, he has taught at the University of Nottingham (Department of Culture, Film and Media), the University of Hull (Department of Geography), and King’s College London (Department of Culture, Media, and Creative Industries).
Kevin has an undergraduate degree from the University of Manchester (Geography), and Masters degrees from the University of Strathclyde (Media Culture) and Birkbeck, University of London (Japanese Cultural Studies). His PhD, ‘Songs of the City: Geographies of Metropolitanism and Mobility in the Music of Frank Sinatra and The BlueNile’, was undertaken at the University of Nottingham.
His research interrogates relationships between urban landscapes, socio-economic conditions, and identity and belonging. It foregrounds how such relationships evolve and are represented in various media, specifically music, film, painting, and literature. Before entering academia, Kevin worked in music industry events, including at the Mercury Prize – the prize awarded to the UK and Ireland ‘Album of the Year’ – which Kevin was Director of from 1999 until 2008.