User:Otterpop72/sandbox

Dr. Jennifer Otter Bickerdike is a media and music academic, specializing in fandom, the cult of dead celebrity, pop culture and music, specifically Joy Division, Post-Punk, Soft Rock and the Golden Age of Hip-Hop.She has written and presented extensively on fandom and media, using her experience as a former American music industry and Silicon Valley executive to explore a range of societal issues and behaviors.

Music experience and early academic career. Otter Bickerdike was raised in Santa Cruz, California, where she established a life long interest and passion for the ocean, conservation, swimming, surfing and music. While working to complete her BA in American Studies at the University of California, Davis, Otter Bickerdike landed her first position in the industry, with a College Music Representative job with Sony Music. Before graduating with her undergraduate degree, she went on to intern at a variety of record companies, including Sony Music, MCA Records and Universal Music and Video Distribution before becoming the West Coast Marketing Director for Interscope Geffen A&M Records at 25. She toured with and devised marketing and branding campaigns for major international acts including Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Dr. Dre, Gwen Stefani, U2 and Eminem, before leaving to start her own consulting company, working with a wide array of creative industry and technology tastemakers, such as Facebook, Music for America, Fuzz, Adeline Records and L.A.M.B.  She concurrently taught at and gained her MA in Humanities from San Francisco State University.

After friend Hunter McPherson was murdered in San Francisco, Jennifer decided to quit her job, sell everything she owned and fulfill a life long dream of living in England. Her story of transformation was picked from thousands and featured in New York Times best-selling author Marlo Thomas’s book, It Ain’t Over ‘Till Its Over.

After moving to London, Otter Bickerdike enrolled in Goldsmiths University of London, where she completed her PhD in Cultural Studies. She was a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader in Art and Cultural Management from 2012-2015, when she took the role of Senior Lecturer Senior Lecturer and Program Leader in Music and Branding at Buckinghamshire New University.

Publications, Media Appearances and Awards

Otter Bickerdike has released several books about fan culture, including 2014’s Fandom, Image and Authenticity: Joy Devotion and the Second Lives of Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis (Palgrave MacMillan); 2015’s The Secular Religion of Fandom (Sage); and the forthcoming 2016 release Joy Devotion:  The Importance of Ian Curtis and Fan Culture. She was also featured as an expert on pop music and culture in the 2014 Channel 4 Christmas Day documentary Frozen at Christmas, as well as on Absolute Radio’s 2013 30 Years of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance.

Otter Bickerdike is asked to speak regularly at conferences and public lectures around the world on various aspects of music and media, from symposiums on branding and promotion to talks on the cultural history of the 27 Club. She has spoken at a range of institutions including Google, Goldsmiths University of London, the Annual Association of Event Management Education, Experience Music Project Seattle, San Francisco’s Noise Pop Festival, XOYO and the BBC, on areas as diverse as the rise of celebrity culture, the tragic gothic heroine, and dark tourism.

In 2013, she won the coveted Student Led Teaching award for Most Innovative Lecturer and was short listed for the same accolade on a national level by the Times Higher Education.