The International Society for Metal Music Studies
The mission of ISMMS is to encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary and international academic research regarding processes and phenomena related to heavy metal music and culture and to support the recognition of such research as a significant contribution to academic communities. Sub-genres of heavy metal and related genres, e.g., hardcore punk, are included. ISMMS exists as a focal organization to establish metal music studies as a relevant and respected academic discipline and contribute to the growth of knowledge within the academic and music communities. These aims shall be accomplished through the development, organization and promotion of state of the art collaborations, publications, activities and events that demonstrate high standards and principles of academic excellence and the important purpose of this research around the world.
Statement of Antidiscrimination
Racism and intersecting forms of discrimination (e.g. sexism, homophobia, ableism) are major social problems that are also present in heavy metal culture. To remain silent in the face of structural racism and other bigotries is not an apolitical or neutral stance, but a form of complicity. Metal has never been apolitical and neither are the researchers who deal with it. It is up to each and every one of us to continually address existing inequalities as well as to commit to ongoing questioning of ourselves and reflection upon our actions. The ISMMS Executive Board is committed to supporting all kinds of antidiscrimination in both metal scenes and academic communities.
The ISMMS Board
Dr Charlotte Naylor Davis (Chair 2026–)
Dr Charlotte Naylor Davis is an independent scholar, working on understanding the Bible as a cultural artefact, with a thesis on the translation of ancient texts using sociolinguistics and text-linguistic analysis. Her current research specialises in the history of interpretation of the Bible, and the reception of texts through arts and literature – including publications on the reception of the bible in science fiction, heavy metal and gender studies. She had to step away from formal academia in 2019 due to her disability which means she cannot work full time, and since has focussed on creating spaces for others to engage and create academic work co-founding the Heavy Metal and Global Premodernity conference, which was set up with a conscious focus on inclusivity and safety for participants
She also has a 25 year career in youth and community work, and icommunity education, with a deep commitment to communalism and safeguarding in social spaces.
Current writing projects are two edited volumes on Heavy Metal in the Premodern world, and a book on the Bible in Heavy Metal for Intellect Press. She works both inside and outside the academy to provide tools of good biblical scholarship to theological students and community groups alike. Her work encourages constructive dialogue about these texts in places that they are often misunderstood or misused.
A. Rose Johnson (Secretary 2024–)
Rose Johnson is a PhD student at Falmouth University with a research focus on Ghost and online metal fandom. Other research interests and publications explore queer applications of monster theory, horror, and occulture. She received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degree, both in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, from the University at Albany. She is an instructional designer at Antioch University. Her persistent garbage habit shows signs of payoff.
Dr Lewis Kennedy (Treasurer & Membership Officer 2019–)
Lewis is a musicologist who works as Curriculum Manager on the BA (Hons) Music (Popular) programme at Leeds Conservatoire. His work on metal includes a PhD on conceptualising genre in metal and hardcore music (University of Hull, 2018) and co-editing the ‘Metal and Musicology’ special issue of Metal Music Studies with M. Selim Yavuz (2019). Lewis has published on the lyrics of Babymetal (2021), NWOAHM and notions of heritage-making in metal/hardcore historiography (2021), and has a chapter on the Hull metal/hardcore scene in Living Metal: Metal Scenes around the World (2021).
Livy Onalee Snyder (Webmaster 2024–)
Livy Onalee Snyder holds degrees from The University of Colorado-Denver and The University of Chicago. Her research focuses on sound studies, metal archives, and affect theory. She recently presented at the first Heavy Metal on the Airwaves Symposium in Liverpool. Her writing has appeared in Sixty Inches From Center, Ruckus, TiltWest, Signal, Metal Music Studies, and more. You can tune into her show at WHPK 88.5 FM Chicago.
Pasqualina Eckerström (Events Officer 2022–)
Dr Pasqualina Eckerström holds a PhD in the Study of Religion from the University of Helsinki and is a postdoctoral researcher in Human Geography at the University of Turku, as well as in the Study of Religions at the University of Helsinki. Her doctoral dissertation examined how extreme metal musicians and fans at risk utilise music to resist religiously motivated laws and to assert personal and social agency under authoritarian regimes.
Currently, Eckerström works in the project Human Rights Incorporated and Acquired HuRiIA – الحرية, which explores the lives of Iraqi women navigating multiple normative frameworks in Finland. She is also involved in the project ArtAct: Artivism Across Borders, which investigates the influence of digitalised activist art related to Iranian women’s protests.
Eckerström is an advocate and a council member of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML). She has also collaborated with Freemuse and Artists at Risk Helsinki. Her advocacy and research focus on art as a tool for activism, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.
Eckerström is serving her second term as an ordinary member in Ismms.
Dr Tore Tvarnø Lind (Communications Officer 2023–)
Tore is associate professor in musicology at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), Denmark. Working primarily within the anthropology of music, Tore is currently doing fieldwork in the black metal undergrounds in Denmark focusing on the fragmented scene, the oceanic, bereavement, and sadness. So far, this research is presented in English in two contributions to the edited volumes Living Metal: Metal Scenes around the World (2021) and Multilingual Metal Music: Sociological, Linguistic and Literary Perspectives on Heavy Metal Lyrics (2020). His forthcoming project on Greek metal music deals with the political and the private in crises (financial, climate, migration, and democracy crises), and how these foster musical expression and activism. Tore holds a PhD in revitalization of the Greek Orthodox Chant tradition at Mount Athos, and his research interests include silence, blasphemy, music as healing, and music torture. Tore has studied at the University of Copenhagen; The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; and the University of Chicago, USA.
Prof. Gérôme Guibert (2024–)
Gérôme is a Professor in sociology and head of the Communication and Media Dpt (ICM) at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris. He has coedited Made In France. Studies in Popular Music (Routledge, 2018) with a chapter about Trust and the birth of French heavy metal and also published several popular music studies books in French including the first international reader in this language, Penser les musiques populaires (Editions de la Philharmonie, 2022). His research fields are live music and local music scenes, and he studies heavy metal music since the beginning of the century. Gerome has especially directed two issues of Volume!, the French popular music studies journal, in 2006 (« Metal scenes » with Fabien Hein) and in 2018 (« Paradoxal metal »). He has also published many papers in English, most of them about Hellfest (one in Popular Music History’s « heavy metal controversies and counterculture » special issue (2011), another in the Global metal music and culture (Routledge, 2016) and in Living Metal. Metal scenes around the world (Intellect, 2022). He was the convenor of the “French Heavy metal and sciences sociales conference” (2014) and also the convenor of the 4th ISMMS international conference in Nantes, 2019.
Holly F. Royle (2025–)
Holly F. Royle (she/her/they/them) is an interdisciplinary PhD student from the Institute of Gender Studies and Department of Popular Music at the University of Chester, UK. Her research is investigating the impact of the seemingly intrinsic masculine nature of metal onto intersectional groups in ‘invisible’ and ‘visible’ spaces across heavy metal subculture, and the significance of micro-interactions between scene members. Holly is a musician in metal herself and is a member of the cinematic metal band Disconnected Souls, a music journalist, and works in music PR specialising in the promotion of hard rock and metal. Holly is the co-editor of the forthcoming gender studies focused volume, Talking Bodies IV: Rage and Care Against the Machine, scheduled for publication in May 2026 via Bloomsbury.
Former Board Members
David Miguel (Ordinary Member 2024-2025)
Dr Steven Gamble (Webmaster 2021–2024)
Owen Coggins (Secretary 2020–2024)
Douglas Mattsson (Ordinary Member 2020–2023)
Dr. Reinhard Kopanski (Ordinary Member 2020–2023)
Manuela Belén Calvo (Ordinary Member 2022)
Prof. Nelson Varas-Díaz (Events/Conference Liaison 2018–2022)
Dr. Gabby Riches (Ordinary Member 2018–2021)
Dr. Ross Hagen (Ordinary Member 2018–2021)
Dr. Amber Clifford-Napoleone
Dr. M. Selim Yavuz
Prof. Toni-Matti Karjalainen
Prof. Karl Spracklen
Marco Ferrarese
Dr. Imke von Helden
Brian Hickam (Membership Officer)
Dr. Claudia Azevedo
Dr. Niall Scott