At the recent Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Conference in Adelaide (27 Nov-1 Dec 2022), some of the authors who contributed to our edited collection Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture : Remixing Theoretical Influencers presented a panel session bringing the chapters into conversation, chaired by the editors Naomi Barnes and Alison Bedford.

I presented from my chapter on 5 Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’, while other authors highlighted unexpected insights achieved by remixing Marx and Westworld, de Beauvoir and Orange is the New Black, or Pierce and The Third Man; as well as a reflection of the researcher identity formation that took place through the editing of the book.

On 7 December, a new edited collection was launched by Bishop Alison Taylor, The Enduring Impact of the Gospel of John, edited by Robert Derrenbacker, Dorothy Lee and Muriel Porter, published by Wipf and Stock, including a co-authored chapter with Andreas Loewe on the influence of Johannine concepts of ‘glory’ in Bach’s St John Passion. In both the source and the later work, ‘glory’ is a paradox of ‘high’ and ‘low’–explored through words, concepts and music.

Other chapters include explorations of first-century viticulture, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Pasifika responses to climate change.

My new co-authored academic monograph, Martin Luther and the Arts: Music, Images, and Drama to Promote the Reformation is now published. The result of a decade of collaborative research with Andreas Loewe, the book explores Luther’s use of artistic forms, in popular and elite settings, to persuade, explain and promote his Reformation ideas.

Martin Luther was the architect and engineer of the Protestant Reformation, which transformed Germany five hundred years ago. In Martin Luther and the Arts, Andreas Loewe and Katherine Firth elucidate Luther’s theory and practice, demonstrating the breadth, flexibility and rigour of Luther’s use of the arts to reach audiences and convince them of his Reformation message using a range of strategies, including music, images and drama alongside sermons, polemical tracts, and his new translation of the Bible into German. 

Extensively based on German and English sources, including often neglected aspects of Luther’s own writings, Loewe and Firth offer a valuable survey for theologians, historians, art historians, musicologists and literary studies scholars interested in interdisciplinary comparisons of Luther’s work across the arts.

It was a pleasure to be interviewed for episode 1 of AASYP Youth Insights – Impact of COVID on international students in Australia – on Import Export TV.com

An extraordinary recording of my words, set by Andrew Schultz, recorded for the Bicentenary of Guatemalan Independence. Listen here

The work is a new arrangement of one movement from our Southern Cantata.

My chapter on understanding Foucault’s concept of the school in Discipline and Punish through the Hogwarts School in the Harry Potter books has been published in a collected edition on  Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture, Remixing Theoretical Influencers, edited by Naomi Barnes and Alison Bedford for Springer.

If you have an institutional library log in, you can download the chapter here.

How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble but for undergraduates. A one-stop slim guide to understanding what lectures want and how to get the grades you are putting in the work for.

Written with the Thesis Whisperer, Inger Mewburn, and Shaun Lehmann, this beautifully produced book has been incredibly popular with high school students, first year university students and postgrads.

Available as an ebook or paperback from or major outlets, or via this link.

Listen to me being interviewed about the book on the New Books Network Podcast.

Your PhD Survival Guide: Planning, Writing, and Succeeding in your Final Year was published by Routledge in ebook, paperback and hardback in December 2020.

Written with Liam Connell and Peta Freestone, the award-winning team behind Thesis Boot Camp, this publication can be called ‘Thesis Boot Camp in a book’.

Available via all major retailers, or this link.