Professor Richard Ekins

Overview

Richard Ekins has been Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies at Ulster University since 2006 (later Emeritus), Professor of Media Studies, 2012-2014, and Professor of Media since 2019. A former jazz musician and current New Orleans jazz record producer for 504/La Croix Records, he is trained in law (Ll.B, Birmingham, 1966); sociology (PhD, London, 1978); psychoanalytic psychotherapy (M.Med.Sc, QUB, 1989); psychoanalysis (M. Inst. of Psychoanal, 1996); and popular music studies/musicology/jazz studies (MA, Liverpool, 2011). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Research

In the late 1970s, Richard was among the first in the world to pioneer a social constructionist (sociological) approach to the field of transgender, then dominated by medico-psychiatric approaches. He was founder and director of the Transgender Archive, Ulster University, 1986-2010. He has published nine books and over 190 articles and book chapters, including The Transgender Phenomenon (with Dave King), CHOICE MAGAZINE Outstanding Academic Title for 2007. As a psychoanalyst with some twenty years of clinical experience, he has made a substantial contribution to the field of psychoanalytic studies, in relation to contemporary developments within classical (Freudian) psychoanalysis, including his 2015, Penguin Modern Classics edition of Anna Freud: Selected Writings (with Ruth Freeman). Since 2005, he has revisited his earlier interests in ‘Early Jazz and New Orleans Jazz Revivalism’ and is publishing in that field in both academic journals and enthusiasts’ jazz magazines, principally in relation to social constructions of ‘authenticity’ and grounded theory historiography.

Most recently, he has published The Politics of Authenticating: Revisiting New Orleans Jazz with his interlocutor Robert Porter (Rowman & Littlefield [Lexington] 2023). The second book in this series will be Psychoanalysis and the Politics of Authenticating, also with Robert Porter as his interlocutor. Meanwhile, he has completed two books to be published in association with Just Jazz magazine: The Genesis and Exodus of Preservation Hall: The Ken Grayson Mills Story and The Birthing of Preservation Hall: The Barbara Glancey Reid Story.