Kirsty Fairclough

Dr Kirsty Fairclough is Head of Research and Knowledge Exchange at the School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University.

She is the current Chair of Manchester Jazz Festival, Manchester's longest running music festival and a member of the Culture Forum North Steering Group.

Kirsty has written widely on music and her current research areas include the audio-visual mediation of popular culture, celebrity studies and popular music with an emphasis on the life and legacy of Prince.

She co-curated the world’s first Prince conference in 2017-Purple Reign: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Life and Legacy of Prince. She is the co-editor of The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop (Routledge), The Arena Concert: Music, Media and Mass Entertainment (Bloomsbury), Music/Video: Forms, Aesthetics, Media (Bloomsbury), Prince and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury) and author of the forthcoming Beyoncé: Celebrity Feminism and Popular Culture (Bloomsbury).

Kirsty is a regular media commentator on popular culture and has been featured on BBC 2, BBC News, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio Manchester and in The Guardian and Creative Review amongst others.

Kirsty works closely with a number of cultural organisations in the UK and is the co-curator of Sound and Vision: Pop Stars on Film and the curator of In Her View: Women Documentary Filmmakers film seasons at HOME, Manchester.