Stephen Millar is Lecturer in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology. His work focuses on music, power, and conflict, with an emphasis on Britain and Ireland. He is particularly interested in the social impact of music-making and his work uses music as a platform to examine some of the most pressing concerns of our times, including militant nationalism, social inclusion, and the legacy of colonialism.

 

Stephen is the author of Sounding Dissent: Rebel Songs, Resistance, and Irish Republicanism (University of Michigan Press, 2020) and Performing Paramilitarism: Loyalist Songs, Conflict, and Culture War in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2026). He is co-editor of two volumes of essays, Football and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2021) and Football, Politics, and Identity (Routledge, 2021), and co-edited a special issue of Managing Sport and Leisure as guest editor in 2020. Stephen is currently working on a new book project on police music ensembles in Northern Ireland.

 

 

Stephen has written on topics ranging from football chants and state censorship to the role of music in engaging hard-to-reach young people, and from music as (post)colonial struggle to community experiences of sectarianism. His work has been published in a broad range of academic journals, including the British Journal of Music Education, Ethnomusicology Forum, Health & Social Care in the Community, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Managing Sport and Leisure, Music & Politics, Popular Music, Popular Music and Society, Race & Class, and Scottish Affairs. Stephen is co-editor of Football and Popular Culture (Routledge, 2021) and Football, Politics, and Identity (Routledge, 2021).

 

Stephen's first monograph Sounding Dissent: Rebel Songs, Resistance, and Irish Republicanism (University of Michigan Press, 2020) explores how Irish republicans have used rebel songs to resist against the hegemonic power of the British state. Drawing on three years of sustained fieldwork within the rebel music scene, the book challenges the parameters of the postcolonial and reconceptualises political resistance through sound, using rebel songs to understand the history of political violence in Ireland. Sounding Dissent has received excellent reviews across a range of journals including Ethnomusicology Forum, Irish Political Studies, the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Oral History, and Popular Music. It was awarded a High Commendation in the British Association for Irish Studies Book Prize (2021).

 

Stephen's second monograph Performing Paramilitarism: Loyalist Songs, Conflict, and Culture War in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2026) examines the interconnection between loyalist songs and political violence in Northern Ireland from the Troubles to the present. Performing Paramilitarism unravels the role songs play in inciting violence during war and legitimising structural violence during peace, examining their embeddedness in paramilitarism and inter-communal conflict. It explores why musicians and audiences continue to consume loyalist songs, and how, in the wake of Brexit, such songs form part of a cultural nostalgia for multiple and intersecting imagined pasts, which resonate with the rise of populism in other parts of the world. 

 

Stephen is currently working on a new book project that focuses on police music making in Northern Ireland. Through archival research and interviews with police musicians, as well as attending concerts and performances, the project seeks to understand the various ways music has been instrumentalised by the police, from professional ensembles as soft power during the early years of the state to music's role in contemporary community relations.

 

 

 

Before joining the faculty at Queen's, Stephen was Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Ethnomusicology at Cardiff University. He was Lead Researcher on the EU-funded COOL Music project and a Researcher on the Community Experiences of Sectarianism project for the Scottish Government. He was was awarded his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Queen’s University Belfast, an M.Phil. in Music from the University of Cambridge, a B.Mus. from the University of Glasgow, and a B.A. in Politics from the University of Strathclyde.

 

 

 

 

 

Katharina Bock: Visual Voices: A User Interface – How Online Resources Aid Educational and Community Development (Second Supervisor) HLF-funded.

 

Catriona Gribben: Exploring the Aural Transmission of Folk Music in Northwest Donegal in Comparison with Pan-Celtic Regions (Second Supervisor) DFE-funded.

 

Eoin Kearns: Intercultural Understanding and Translocal Interactions: Irish Traditional Music Communities and the Irish State in China (First Supervisor) AHRC-funded.

 

Holly Mulhern: Taking Medicines at Home: Exploring medication use as a socially embedded phenomenon (Tertiary Supervisor) Funded by the Dunhil Medical Trust.

 

Dorothea Papadaki: Greek Folk and Popular Music and the Greek Female Diaspora in England (Second Supervisor) DFE-funded.