Steve Waksman

Steve Waksman is the Leverhulme International Professor of Popular Music in the Department of Media, Humanities and the Arts, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Huddersfield, and a member of the Centre for Research in Music and its Technologies. A leading scholar of popular music, he is author or editor of numerous award-winning books and essays on the electric guitar, heavy metal, punk, live music and music technology.

Education & Awards:

• Dissertation on the electric guitar awarded the 1998 Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize (American Studies Association)
• Woody Guthrie Prize (International Association for the Study of Popular Music, U.S. Chapter)
• Music in American Culture Award (American Musicological Society)

Research Interests:
Waksman’s work spans the history of musical instruments, intersections of music and technology, genre studies (with special attention to heavy metal and punk), live-music studies, sound studies, and the politics of race, gender, sexuality and identity in popular music from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. He is currently initiating a major five-year Leverhulme-funded project on amplification technologies and amplified sound.

Recent Publications:
His recent outputs focus on the electric guitar’s cultural history and the broad sweep of American live music. These works collectively illuminate how instruments, genres, and performance spaces shape—and are shaped by—technological, social and economic forces.

Grants & Projects:

• Leverhulme International Professorship Scheme: £5 million “Amplification Project” (2025–2030)

Outreach & Media:
Known as the “Doctor of Rock” on WRSI radio (The River, Western Massachusetts), Waksman regularly contributes historical segments for Black History Month and Women’s History Month. He has also participated in international public-engagement podcasts and press coverage concerning the electric guitar.