Marek Korczynski is Professor of Sociology of Work at the University of Nottingham. He has written and edited a number of acclaimed books, including On the Front Line (1999, co-authored), Human Resource Management in Service Work (2002) and Social Theory at Work (2006, co-edited). 

He has also published widely on the connections between music and work, including articles in journals such as Work and Occupations, Organisation Studies, Popular Music, Folk Music Journal, Business History, Labour History Review and Cultural and Social History. 

He gained his Ph.D. from the University of Warwick, and has been a visiting professor at Karlstad University, Sweden. 

He is currently researching workers’ responses to music in service (retail and café) settings – see Music and Service Work.

Michael Pickering is Professor of Media and Cultural Analysis in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University. Michael has published in the areas of cultural history and the sociology of culture, as well as media analysis and theory. 

His most recent publications are The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice (2012), co-written with Emily Keightley, and Research Methods for Memory Studies (2013), co-edited with Emily Keightley. His other books include Researching Communications (1999/2007), co-written with David Deacon, Peter Golding and Graham Murdock; Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value (2004), co-written with Keith Negus; Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour (2005), co-edited with Sharon Lockyer; Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain (2008); and Research Methods for Cultural Studies (2008).

Dr. Emma Robertson is Lecturer in History at La Trobe University, Australia. Her first book, Chocolate, Women and Empire: A Social and Cultural History, was published in 2009. Additional publications from her research on the chocolate industry have appeared in the edited collection Women and Work Cultures, Britain 1850–1950 (ed. Krista Cowman and Louise Jackson, 2005), Business History, BBC History Magazine (April 2010) and online at www.cocoareworks.co.uk. 

She has also published on the history of radio in relation to the BBC Empire/World Service and is writing a co-authored book on this topic with Dr Gordon Johnston. Emma is currently researching British multinational companies in Australia, including the Rowntree and Cadbury confectionery firms. She is on the editorial board of Women’s History Magazine.