Edward Akintola (Akin) Hubbard’s scholarly interests are in pop culture, creative economies and ecologies, cultural entrepreneurship, creolization and creole expressive forms, gothic and carnivalesque aesthetics, gender and sexuality, cultural globalization, and the intersection of ethnographic and artistic practice.
He holds a BA in Mass Communication from the University of the West Indies, an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University. Before coming to Universiteit Utrecht in 2015, he designed and taught courses at Harvard and New York Universities on media and globalization, avant-garde aesthetics, cinema, queer studies and ethnographic methods. His courses merge the study of cultural texts, mediascapes and ethnographic data, bringing perspectives on fine arts, music, film, media and literature into dialogue with cultural theory and globalization studies.
He has been an award-winning investigative journalist, news reporter and television producer, has worked on artist promotion for Paris-based Lusafrica Records, and conducts an Experimental Ethnography Workshop – so far in the U.S., China and Brazil – that merges ethnographic research methods and art practice.
Dr. Hubbard’s multi-sited research has spanned a wide range of media that include cinema and visual culture, music, contemporary art and folklore. The regional focus of his research is the Afro-Atlantic – specifically the Caribbean, Brazil and Cape Verde – and its diaspora communities in Europe and the United States. He is currently preparing his first book, tentatively titled Blue Batuku: The Making of an Afro-Creole Musical Vanguard in Cape Verde, based on over three years of fieldwork in the Cape Verde Islands. His ethnographic research experience has brought him into intimate and long-term contact with musicians, musician communities, consumers, promoters, producers, jazz festival organizers, and various “cultural” stakeholders and corporate interests. His ongoing ethnographic work on world music examines the links between industrial, creative and socio-cultural processes at the local and global levels.