Swivelling the spotlight: stardom, celebrity and ‘me’

Celebrity studies critiques the ways in which celebrity culture constructs discourses of authenticity and disclosure, offering the cultural and economic circulation of the ‘private’ self. Rarely, however, do we turn the spotlight on ourselves as not only scholars of stardom and celebrity, but also part of the audience. Autoethnography has become increasingly important across different disciplines, although its status within media and cultural studies is less visible and secure, not least because the emphasis on personal attachments to media forms may threaten the discipline’s still contested claim to cultural legitimacy. The study of stars and celebrities has often found itself at the ‘lower’ end of this already debased continuum, perhaps making such tensions particularly acute. Based on three personal narratives of engagements with stars and celebrities, this co-authored article explores the potential relationships between autoethnography and celebrity studies, and considers the personal, intellectual, and political implications of bringing the scholar into the celebrity frame

Back then, and now - just who is David Bowie?

Our lives are often shaped and made meaningful by the stars and celebrities who enter them. Our bedrooms can become shrines of longing, identification and desire, and the friends we make and the lovers we take can gravitate around the famous figure we together so admire. For the writers of this piece, David Bowie is one such star-man: his music, lyrics, writings and performances are felt to wrap themselves around their youth, their rebellion, their hurt, and their love

Who is he now? The unearthly David Bowie

The question that has led and organised this special edition on David Bowie draws provocative attention to the way his career has been narrated by the constant transformation and recasting of his star image. By asking who is he now? the edition recognises that Bowie is a chameleon figure, one who reinvents himself in and across the media and art platforms that he is found in. This process of renewal means that Bowie constantly kills himself, an artistic suicide that allows for dramatic event moments to populate his music, and for a rebirth to emerge at the same time or shortly after he expires. Bowie has killed Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Halloween Jack, Aladdin Sane, and the Thin White Duke to name but a few of his alter-egos. In this environment of death and resurrection, Bowie becomes a heightened, exaggerated enigma, a figure who constantly seems to be artificial or constructed and yet whose work asks us to look for his real self behind the mask &ndash; to ask the question, is this now the real Bowie that faces us? Of course, the answer is always no because Bowie is a contradictory constellation of images, stories and sounds whose star image rests on remaining an enigma, and like all stars in our midst, exists as a representation. Nonetheless, with Bowie - with this hyper- schizophrenic, confessional artist &ndash; the fan desire to get to know him, to immerse oneself in his worlds, fantasises, and projections - is particularly acute. With the unexpected release of The Next Day ((Iso/Columbia) on the 8th March 2013, the day of his 66th birthday, Bowie was resurrected again. The album and subsequent music videos drew explicitly on the question of who Bowie was and had been, creating a media frenzy around his past work, fan nostalgia for previous Bowie incarnations, and a pleasurable negotiation with his new output. In this special edition, edited by life-long Bowie fans, with contributions from die-hard Bowie aficionados, we seek to find him in the fragments and remains of what once was, and in the new enchantments of his latest work.</span

Enchanting David Bowie space/time/body/memory

This exciting collection is organized according to the key themes of space, time, body, and memory - themes that literally and metaphorically address the key questions and intensities of his output

Our Sherlockian eyes: the surveillance of vision

or this inter-disciplinary article, we undertook a pilot case study that eye-tracked the &lsquo;Holmes Saves Mrs. Hudson&rsquo; sequence from the episode, A Scandal in Belgravia (Sherlock, BBC, 2012). This small-scale empirical study involved a total of 13 participants (3 males and 10 females, mean age was: 27 years), comprised of a mixture of academics and undergraduate students at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. The article examines its findings through a range of threaded frames &ndash; neuroscience, forensics, surveillance, haptics, memory, performance-movement, and relationality &ndash; and uniquely draws upon the interests of the authors to set the examination in context. The article is both a reading of Sherlock and a dialogue between its authors. We discover that the codes and conventions of Sherlock have a direct impact on where viewers look but we also discover eyes emerging in the periphery of the frame, and we account for these ways of seeing in different ways

Measuring effectiveness in Ireland's youth justice system. Technical report 2022.

Youth justice systems are aligning programmes and services with evidence-informed practice. In jurisdictions, research institutions support justice agency monitoring and evaluation needs and work with government departments and service providers to plan and develop practice. This report examines data processes and reporting in Ireland’s youth justice system and identifies potential data opportunities in the system

Measuring outcomes in youth justice programmes: a review of literature and practice evidence.

This Research Evidence into Policy, Programmes, and Practice (REPPP) study examined outcome measurement in youth justice programmes, youth work, and human services. Outcomes for young people are the effects or contribution to effects for young people that can reasonably be attributed to their participation in a programme. The research was commissioned by the Department of Justice to support improved measurement in Garda Youth Diversion Projects (GYDPs)

Lazarus rises: storying the self in the migrant fandom of David Bowie

In this article we focus upon the ways that &ldquo;migrants&rdquo; in Melbourne have used David Bowie to story and make sense of their arrival to Australia, often as refugees or as people looking for a better life. In relation to identity and belonging, some recent work on music fandom (Groene and Hettinger 2015; Lowe 2003), has imposed a meta-frame on the empirical method, substituting voices for a top-down analysis and interpretation. Our approach is to instead draw both upon auto-ethnography and to allow our fellow fans to &ldquo;story&rdquo; their own responses, in an attempt to get beneath the modes of feeling that music fandom ignites &ndash; situated within the narratives that people construct as they talk these stories. We argue that Bowie&rsquo;s alternative and outsider status resonates keenly with people who find themselves &ldquo;strangers&rdquo; in a new land

Correction: Managing Climate Change Refugia for Climate Adaptation.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0159909.]