Yorgos Paschos
Research project
Supervisor
Funding
White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH) AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award Studentship.
Doctoral Award between the Department of Archaeology, University of York and York Music Venue Network
Summary of research project:
Assessing the (Sub)cultural Heritage Significance of Grassroots Music Venues
This project explores the importance of grassroots music venues in terms of their engagement with local communities, their heritage, and their cultural and financial impact on the places they are situated in. It also defines the heritage values people attach to Grassroots Music Venues and their pivotal role in shaping cultural identities. Moreover, it investigates the cultural impact of live music on society. Finally, it creates a new innovative methodological and theoretical framework for the exploration of the significance of local music scenes, including venues. This exploration turns the epistemological spotlight on GMV’s contribution to local (sub)cultural heritage.
Profile
I completed my undergraduate studies at the Communication and Media Department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2018. After graduating, I worked as a Research Assistant (‘Cultural Capital and Culture - Oriented Lifestyle’) at the sociological research program ‘Monitoring and Evaluation Project of Eleusis 2021: European Cultural Capital’, organised by the University of Athens. Between September 2018 and September 2019, I reviewed sociological literature and conducted in-depth interviews and questionnaires measuring the volume and the composition of the cultural capital of people living in Eleusina, a Greek industrial city.
In September 2019, I commenced a two-year Research Master in Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts at Erasmus University Rotterdam. During the course of my studies, I worked as a research assistant. My primary responsibilities included qualitative data analysis in the field of cultural sociology and the development of a theoretical framework grounded on a multidisciplinary approach that examined the change in music appreciation during repeated exposure to different tunes. My RMA thesis entitled ‘Physical Space and Collective Identity-Making: DIY Cultural Spaces in Times of Lockdown’ explored the role of physical space in the collective identity-making of DIY cultural-political spaces in times of lockdown.
Moreover, I am a member of the Punk Scholars Network which is an international forum for academic and scholarly debate, conferences, publications, talks and public exhibitions. More widely, my interests include attending live gigs (mostly post-punk and punk), watching obscure films and enjoying one (or more) pints of a good IPA or Guinness.
Publications/Papers and Academic Awards
Publications
Giolo, G. & Paschos Y. (2024) ( accepted/ in press) “Mapping The Urban Unconscious: Towards a Hybrid Application of Deep Mapping and Sentiment Analysis” in City, Public Space, and Body: The Embodied Experience of Urban, Routledge
Paschos, Y. (2024), (in press) "Autonomous social centers as rhizomatic real utopias" in Anarchist Punks Doing It Together – Cultural Production, Autonomous Spaces, DIY’, Active Distribution Publishing
Schofield, J., et al., (2024), (accepted/in press) “Do-it-together: Punk Methodologies for Researching the Heritage of Popular Music”, The Intellect handbook of Popular Music Methodologies, Intellect
Paschos, Y., (2023), “Exploring the forgotten: The evidential heritage values of Grassroots Music Venues”, Riffs
Paschos, Y., (2022), “Book review: Electric Wizards; A Tapestry of Heavy Music from 1968 to the Present, J. R. Moores, Punk and Post Punk
Paschos. Y., (2020), "Book Review: Inside the Critics’ circle: book reviewing in uncertain times", Cultural Trends
Conference Presentations
- Speaker – Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS) biennial and international conference, ‘Assessing the Subcultural Heritage Significance of Grassroots Music Venues’, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland, June 2024
- Session Organiser – Nordic TAG conference, ‘Postcapitalism and Cultural Heritage, University of Turku, Finland, March 2024
- Speaker – Horizons of Punk: Punk-Rock Scholarship and its Methodologies, ‘Exploring subcultural narratives in postmodern tourist enclaves: The case of York, UK’, Gustave Eiffel University (Laboratoire LISAA), Paris, France, June 2023
- Speaker – Punk Scholars Network 9th Annual Conference and Postgraduate Symposium, ‘ Lazy Sods up north: The cultural heritage of Sex Pistols in Northern English Venues, Middlesex University, London, the UK December 2022
- Speaker – KISMIF, ‘Sound as Aesthetic Value; The case of Grassroots Music Venues as Heritage Sites, University of Porto, Portugal, July 2022
- Speaker – City, Public Space and Body, ‘Mapping the Urban Unconscious: Towards a Hybrid Application of Deep Mapping and Sentiment Analysis, Goldsmiths University of London, the UK, December 2021
- Speaker – DvdS Conference, ‘Physical Space and Collective Identity- Making: DIY Cultural Spaces in Times of Lockdown’, Utrecht, the Netherlands, June 2021
- Speaker – Punk Scholars Network Annual Conference, ‘DIY Venues as Real Utopias’, December 2020
- Speaker – Contradictions in the Modern World: Politics, Ideology, Society Conference, ‘The Illusion of Natural Gift: A Bourdeusian Approach’, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, November 2020
Awards
- Highly Commended – ‘Archive All Areas; music, memory, people and places” (Public engagement project), a collaboration between the StreetLife York, InterMusE and Our Place project’, York Open Research Awards, University of York, 2023
- Finalist – PhD Spotlight Competition, University of York, 2023
- Finalist – HRC PhD poster competition, University of York, 2022
Teaching and Impact
Graduate Teaching Assistant, Cultivating a Sociological Imagination- Department of Sociology, University of York, 2022-2023
Co-curator of the exhibition “Archive All Areas People, Places, Memories & Music”, York Music Venue Network in partnership with the University of York and Streetlife, 2023
