Professor
Will Straw is聽Professor of Urban Media Studies.聽 He has been Visiting Professor at the Open University (Budapest), the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of Belgrade.聽He is also聽Adjunct Research Professor聽in the聽Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture, Carleton University.聽
Professor Straw has a Bachelor degree in Film Studies, and postgraduate degrees in Communications Studies.聽Much of his work has dealt with the social and institutional dimensions of popular music, and with the development of the notion of music scene.聽He has a strong interest, as well, in histories of popular music in Montreal, Quebec and Canada.聽
More recently,聽Dr. Straw鈥檚 research has come to focus on the ways in which the night-time culture of cities is governed, promoted and represented.聽On the one hand, this takes the form of an interest in new policy instruments adopted by cities so as to acknowledge the role of night-time culture within them.聽On the other hand, this interest takes him into the study of narrative forms (in the cinema, journalism and fiction) that treat the night as a distinct 鈥渢erritory鈥� of human experience.聽 Straw maintains a website, theurbannight.com, that tracks developments in night-time urban culture.聽聽聽
Dr. Straw is on the editorial boards of many of the leading journals in several fields, including聽 Screen, Cultural Studies,聽Interm茅dialit茅s, Convergences: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Space and Culture, and Journal of Urban Cultural Studies.聽 With Kieran Bonner, he co-edits the book series Culture of Cities (海角社区-Queens University Press).聽 With Bart Beaty, he edits the series Canadian Cinema (University of Toronto Press).聽
For a full list of Dr. Straw鈥檚 publications, with links for downloads of many of them, visit his website,