Dr. Sarah Hill

Biography

Sarah Hill is an Associate Professor and Fellow Tutor in the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford, where she has been part of the faculty since 2021. With a rich academic background that includes degrees from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Chicago, and Cardiff University, she holds a PhD focused on the relationship between post-war popular music and political activism, particularly in the context of the Welsh language. Sarah's academic career includes lectureships at the University of Southampton and Cardiff University. Her research interests predominantly lie in the historiography of popular music. She authored the monograph "San Francisco Long 60s" published by Bloomsbury in 2016, which explores the development of psychedelic musical culture in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood from 1963 to 1969. This work, along with her ethnographic material, informed a Radio 2 documentary titled "Taste Summer" that discussed the myth of Summer Love. Sarah has consistently contributed to the understanding of Welsh-language popular music, counterculture, music politics, and issues of music identity. She has edited and contributed to various scholarly works including the collection "One-Hit Wonders" and continues to engage in research about women rock critics and second-wave feminism in the 1970s. In 2012, she became the Co-ordinating Editor for the journal Popular Music and was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2023.

Research Interests