I’m a lecturer, writer and editor trained in ethnography.
With a PhD in the Anthropology of Music, I write about crowds and their sonic worlds. I teach university seminars in Anthropology and Music Departments and advise students working on music, sound and culture.
I write about the lifeworlds of subculture and social movements.
Published widely in top journals across the fields of ethnomusicology and sound studies, I have experience teaching a broad array of university seminars in addition to writing, reviewing, and copy-editing academic research. I wrote a book with Oxford University Press about hardcore soccer fans called ultras, titled Insurgent Fandom—check it out!
About Me
I do hands-on research with the people that I write about—my desire since the beginning of my graduate studies has been to learn by doing. At the disciplinary intersection of Music Studies and Cultural Anthropology, I work as a teacher, researcher, and an editor—tasks which align with my aspiration to enhance others’ critical thinking and provide them with the tools to create effective and evocative writing.
I received my PhD in 2019 from the University of California - Santa Barbara and have since taught at a range of universities in the United States and Germany. I was most recently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the world-leading Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, working on a range of projects related to sound, affect, and politics.
Books
Insurgent Fandom offers a behind-the-scenes look at a transnational subculture known to few—ultra. As the most dedicated soccer fans, ultras support their team through collective singing, jumping, flag-waving, and lighting marine flares. While some characterize ultras as hooligans, author Max Jack argues that ultras' performative style of support is in part a protest informed by the ultras' constant friction with the state, the mainstream media, and the commercial priorities of sports' governing bodies. Because of this conflict with authority, fandom for ultras takes on a collective social life in which the game on the field often becomes a secondary concern. With political implications extending past the realm of sports, ultras have even become key actors in some of the most significant mass protests of the 21st century-including those in Cairo (2011), Istanbul (2013), and Kiev (2013). Insurgent Fandom embraces this politic of dissent at the heart of crowd action and casts a light on stadia as a breeding ground for alternative social and political possibilities.
Oxford University Press, 2024
Selected Classes and Seminars
Public Culture, Space, and the Sounds of Ethnography (2023-24)
Institute for Musicology and Media Studies, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Music and Politics (2021-22)
Institute for Musicology, Goethe Universität Frankfurt
The Black Radical Tradition from R&B to Hip Hop (2021-22)
Music and Conflict (2020-21)
Institute for Fine Arts, Music, and Education, Leuphana University Lüneburg
Anthropology of Protest (2020-21)
Cultures of Radicalism (2020-21)
Institute for Cultural/Social Anthropology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Editing Services
I provide services for academic and non-fiction writers in different stages of the writing process. 1) I give incisive feedback on conceptual, structural and organisational themes in earlier phases of drafting. 2) In more refined stages of the process, I offer stylistic feedback at a line-by-line level to enhance the author’s arguments. Once a piece of writing is nearing submission, I provide technical feedback on issues such as grammar and spelling.