About Keith Kahn-Harris

Dr Keith Kahn-Harris is a sociologist specialising in two very different areas of expertise:

1. contemporary Jewish identity and culture and
2. contemporary music scenes and in particular the global extreme metal scene.

His engagement with Judaism is maintained by a ‘davkanik’ refusal to see his less coventional interests — extreme metal music, transgressive art, and leftist politics — as incompatible with membership in the mainstream British Jewish community. Keith works as an associate lecturer at the Open University, and as a freelance research consultant in the Jewish community. From 2001-2 he was a ‘Jerusalem Fellow’ at the Mandel School in Jersualem and he has held visiting fellowships and lectureships at universities in Australia, Finland and Sweden. Keith co-authored Beyond Belonging: The Jewish Identities of Moderately Engaged British Jews (with Steven M. Cohen, Profile Books, 2004), co-edited After Subculture (with Andy Bennett, Palgrave, 2004) and edited New Voices in Jewish Thought: Volume 2 (Limmud publications 1999). His book Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge will be published by Berg in December 2006. A more extensive publications list is available on his website at http://www.kahn-harris.org . Keith also writes a blog, Metal Jew (http://kkahnharris.typepad.com/).