Hesmondhalgh is Professor of Media, Music and Culture at the University of Leeds. His interests include the cultural and creative industries, cultural policy, the politics of musical experience, and how ‘cultural platforms’ are transforming media. He joined the University of Leeds in 2007, having previously worked at The Open University for eight years. He obtained a PhD from Goldsmiths University of London in 1996 for his dissertation on British independentrecord companies, where he was supervised by Georgina Born. His books include The Cultural Industries, first published in 2002, described by Herbert et al. in their Media Industry Studies as “a formative text for many who began their research careers at the start of the century” and as “extensively updated to keep pace with the new issues developing in an era of social and internet-distributed media”. Oakley and O’Connor describe the same book as “the most comprehensive overview of the literature and issues in the field” of cultural and creative industries. He is acknowledged as a key figure in developing the “cultural industries” approach to media, which emphasises the complex and contradictory nature of cultural production under capitalism. He is frequently named as one of the leading analysts of cultural labour, partly based on his book Creative Labour, co-written with Sarah Baker. He is also well-known for his work on the sociology of music, especially his book Why Music Matters, which provides a “nuanced case for msuic’s value in contributing to intimate and collective ‘human flourishing’”.
Personal life
He is the brother of actor and activist Julie Hesmondhalgh and the father of actor and writer Rosa Hesmondhalgh. His long-term partner is the British philosopher Helen Steward.
Books
The Cultural Industries, 4th edition.
Media and Society, 6th edition. Eds. J. Curran and D. Hesmondhalgh.
Culture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour D. Hesmondhalgh, K. Oakley, D. Lee, M. Nisbett.
Why Music Matters.
Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries. D. Hesmondhalgh and S. Baker.
The Media and Social Theory. Eds. D Hesmondhalgh, J. Toynbee..
Media Production,
Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity. Eds. J. Evans and D. Hesmondhalgh.
Popular Music Studies. Eds. D. Hesmondhalgh and K. Negus
Western Music and its Others: Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music,
Selected publications
Hesmondhalgh, D. ‘The British General Election: the nightmare before Christmas’, Social Text Online, 13 December.
Hesmondhalgh, D. ‘British election nights, despair and hope: a personal history’, Social Text Online, 20 June.
Hesmondhalgh, D. ‘Why it matters when big tech firms extend their power into media content’, The Conversation, 15 November.
Hesmondhalgh, D. ‘The media’s failure to represent the working class: explanations from media production and beyond’, in June Deery and Andrea Press, The Media and Class, pp. 21-37.
Hesmondhalgh, D. ‘Exploitation and media labor’, in Richard Maxwell, The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media, New York and Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 30-39.
Hesmondhalgh, D. ‘Politics, theory and method in media industries research’, in Holt, J. and Perren, A., Media Industries: History, Theory, Method. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 245-55.
Hesmondhalgh, D. ‘Discourse analysis and content analysis’, in Gillespie, M. and Toynbee, J., Analysing Media Texts, Maidenhead and Milton Keynes: The Open University Press/The Open University, pp. 119-156.
Hesmondhalgh, D. ‘Inside media organizations: production, autonomy and power’, in Hesmondhalgh, D. Media Production, Maidenhead and Milton Keynes: The Open University Press/The Open University, pp. 49-90.
Hesmondhalgh, D. ‘The production of media entertainment’, in Curran, J. and Gurevitch, M., Mass Media and Society, 4th edn., London, Hodder Arnold, pp. 153-71.
