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Professor in American Studies, Northumbria University, Newcastle

Brian is a historian of the modern US South, the civil rights movement, popular music, the 1960s, and Anglo-American cultural relations. He is Professor in American Studies at Northumbria University and a former Chair of the British Association for American Studies. Previously, he held the Chair in American Studies at the University of Manchester (2006-2012), served as Head of the Department of History at the University of Florida (2000-2006), and taught at the Universities of Newcastle upon Tyne (1991-2000) and Durham (1990-91).

Brian has published 10 books, including the multiple award-winning Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness and Race Relations (1998) and more recently Martin Luther King in Newcastle: The African American Freedom Struggle and Race Relations in the North East of England (2017) and A&R Pioneers: Architects of American Popular Music on Record (2018), co-authored with Patrick Huber. His next book, due in 2024, is provisionally entitled She Loves Y'all: The Beatles and the US South.

He has also developed MOOCs on the American South and Global Geordies on the history, politics and culture of the North East of England.

Experience

  • –present
    Professor in American Studies, Northumbria University, Newcastle