Professor Ruth Finnegan
Research interests
My research focuses on the anthropology / sociology of artistic activity, communication and performance (especially ‘oral’ literature and music), as studied both ethnographically and in cross-cultural perspective, interacting with on-going debates about orality, literacy and multimodality in human communication. My focus is especially on the amateur, ‘hidden’ and ‘ordinary’ dimensions of such activities (including knowledge production).
Current projects include
- Contribution to ‘Migrating music’ theme with special reference to a small case study of local radio and its setting in Fiji at three key ‘moments’, based on documentary and field sources (in association with the AHRC project ‘Tuning In: Diasporic Contact Zones at the BBC World Service’, located in Theme 2), report to be included among papers from ‘Migrating Music’ Conference (SOAS 2009) and possibly later a short book.
- Editor (with Martin Orwin and Graham Furniss) of special issue, Journal of African Cultural Studies 23, 1 (June 2011) on the Somali passion for poetry and language.
- Interdisciplinary book on ‘quoting’, aiming both to give some account of people’s practices today (based largely on commissioned Mass Observation directive, autumn 2006) and to uncover something of the comparative and historical background that lies behind this. Provisional title Why do we quote? The near and far of others’ words and voices, planned completion end 2010.
Recent publications
- Finnegan, Ruth (2009) ‘Creativity – but where do you look? A tale of musicians in Milton Keynes’, Oral History 37, 2 (special issue Community and creativity: a life stories perspective), pp. 45-50
- Finnegan, Ruth (2008) ‘Data – but data from what?’ Language Documentation and Description 5, pp.13-28
- Finnegan, Ruth (2008) ‘Which comes first: the words, the music or the performance?’ [in Portuguese translation], in Cláudia Neiva de Matos, Elizabeth Travassos, and Fernanda Teixeira de Medeiros (eds) Palavra cantada: ensaios sobre poesia, música e voz, 7 Letras: Rio de Janeiro
- Finnegan, Ruth (2007) The oral and beyond: doing things with words in Africa, James Currey, Oxford / University of Chicago Press / University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Scottsville South Africa
- Finnegan, Ruth (2007) The hidden musicians: music-making in an English town, 2nd edn, Music/Culture series, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press
- Finnegan, Ruth (2007) ‘Should we notice researchers outside the university?’, British Academy Review, 10, pp. 58-61
- Finnegan, Ruth (2007) ‘Literature: oral’, in John Middleton et al. (eds) New Encyclopedia of Africa, 5 Vols, 2nd edition, Farmington Hills MI: Thomson Gale
- Finnegan, Ruth (2006) ‘It’s not just the words … : the arts and action of performance’, in Goodman, S. and O’Halloran, K. (eds) The Art of English: Literary Creativity, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
- Finnegan, Ruth (2006) 'Not by words alone: reclothing the oral', in Michael Cole and David Olson (eds), Technology, Literacy and the Evolution of Society: Implications of the Work of Jack Goody, Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
- Finnegan, Ruth (ed.) (2005) Participating in the knowledge society: researchers beyond the university walls, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan
- Finnegan, Ruth (2005) ‘The how of literature’, in Andrew Gerstle, Stephanie Jones and Rosalind Thomas (eds) Performance Literature, special issue, Oral Tradition 20, 1-2: 164-87
- Finnegan, Ruth (2003) ‘Orality and literacy: epic heroes of human destiny?’, International Journal of Learning 10, pp. 1551-60
- Finnegan, Ruth (2003) 'Music, experience, and the anthropology of the emotions', in Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton (eds) The Cultural Study of Music: a Critical Introduction, New York: Routledge, pp. 181-92
- Finnegan, Ruth (2003) 'Where is the meaning? the complexities of oral poetry and beyond', in Fotis Jannadis, Gerhard Lauer, Matias Martinez and Simone Winko (eds) Regeln der Bedeutung. Zür Theorie der Bedeutung Literarisher Texte (Revisionen: Grundbegriffe der Literaturtheorie 1), Berlin: de Gruyter: pp. 384-400
- Finnegan, Ruth (2002) 'Why study music? an anthropologist's reflections from the field' [in Spanish translation], Revista Transcultural de Música /Transcultural Music Review 6: http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans6/finnegan.htm (1st published Antropología: Revista de Pensamiento Antropológico y Estudios Ethnográficos 15/16, 1999 (special issue on anthropology of music), pp. 9-32)
- Finnegan, Ruth (2002) Communicating: the multiple modes of human interconnection, London: Routledge
Contact Details
Faculty of Social Sciences
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
UK
email: r.h.finnegan@open.ac.uk
Further information about Professor Ruth Finnegan