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Depending on context, discipline might refer to the training of subjects to conform to an established code of behaviour using mechanisms of reward or punishment, or alternatively, to a cohesive area of knowledge and practice with defined and accepted parameters. These usages are connected, however, in that they both describe ‘form[s] of the exercise of power within social organisations’ that maintain order and conformity (Gill, 1995, p. 411). In this presentation, I argue that the academic sub-discipline of higher popular music education (HPME), which first emerged in the late 1980s and has proliferated across UK higher education, has derived its current form through the neoliberal disciplining of cultural and educational institutions.

I use Banwait and Hancock’s (2022) Phases of HE Marketisation as a chronological framework to chart how educational and cultural policymaking has shaped HPME from above and below, structuring its background conditions and disseminating a lexicon of neoliberal values that have become common sense. Through analysis of policy, public debate, and interviews with HPME students and educators, I illustrate how HPME has emerged from neoliberal conditions that have simultaneously shaped the political economy of its object of study (popular music), its corresponding professional domain (the ‘creative industries’), and the curricula and institutional infrastructure through which it is taught.

Biography

Tom Parkinson is Head of Doctoral Programmes at the Royal Northern College of Music. Prior to joining RNCM in 2025, he was Reader in the Centre for the Study of Education at the University of Kent. His research interests include music in higher education, popular music in Turkey, songwriting, and education in the context of forced displacement.

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This event is free. No ticket required.

Promoted by RNCM.

This event will end at approximately 5.30pm.