Jim Donaghey (BA, MA, PhD, FHEA) is an early career researcher, establishing a reputation in the academic community for high quality research, with a diverse teaching portfolio characterised by a commitment to innovative, student-led pedagogies. Jim's research intensity is evidenced by his publication record and success in attracting significant research funding. He has extensive experience of carrying out research into the intersections of culture and politics, with an emphasis on participatory and creative methodologies. He is recognised as an expert in punk and radical politics and has used this as a springboard to explore issues of cultural production and industry, cultural repression, post-conflict legacies, contested spaces, and transnational movement organising. Jim has taught across disciplines including Cultural Studies, Sociology, Human Geography, Politics and History. He is well networked, being regularly asked to review work formally and informally, he has been invited as guest and keynote speaker at conferences and symposia, and his work is being cited and read on online academic networking sites. Jim has twice been the guest editor for Punk & Post-Punk journal, is a member of the executive editorial board of Anarchist Studies journal, and is editor of www.AnarchistStudies.Blog.

Failed States and Creative Resistances: The Everyday Life of Punks in Belfast, Banda Aceh and Mitrovica

This project seeks to explore the everyday lives and creative activities of punk communities in Belfast (Northern Ireland), Banda Aceh (Indonesia), Mitrovica (Kosovo/Serbia), and Soweto (South Africa). The everyday life-worlds of these 'punk hinterland' communities offer a set of critical perspectives on their 'failed state' contexts, experienced across a spectrum of neglect/restraint. The punks' own Do-It-Yourself cultural and media production practice grounds a recognition of cultural value beyond, and in opposition to, the narrow economism of entrepreneurial, industry and state discourses - this creativity shapes the resistant subjectivities of punk. The artefacts that are produced through this DIY cultural industry are part of the shared language of 'global punk', and the project's methodologies draw on this by generating inter-contextual dialogue through compilation records produced in each locale (in addition to participant observation and interviews).

 ‘Get Portrush a Skatepark!’ Nurturing skateboard culture on NI’s North Coast – innovating a grassroots campaign and policy-oriented lesson-learning (AHRC Creative Communities).

Community Innovation Practitioner – 2023-current.

In collaboration with third-sector partner CAUS (the Causeway Association of Urban Sports) and the wider Portrush skateboarding community, this project intervenes to develop understanding of the value of skaters as a Creative Community. This mode of community engagement is used to explore the role of emergent cultural voices in a deeply divided context that is experiencing the detrimental social impacts of profit-oriented gentrification. The project will produce a range of podcast and video outputs, research findings, and methodological innovation.