Olivier Julien lectures the history and musicology of popular music at Paris-Sorbonne University. During the 1990s, he worked as a songwriter and music journalist while completing studies in music and musicology. He graduated in 1999 with a PhD dissertation on the Beatles’ sound and subsequently contributed to several publications in France and abroad (Volume!, Musurgia, Les Cahiers de l’OMF, Analyse Musicale, Canadian University Music Review, British Journal of Music Education, Popular Music, The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Music in the Social & Behavioral Sciences: An Encyclopedia, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture, etc.). An English-to-French translator for the Cité de la Musique, the Salle Pleyel and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, a member of 'Volume! La revue des musiques populaires’, Audio/Visual: Journal of Cultural Media Studies’ and Vox Popular’s editorial and advisory boards, a referee for the ‘Arts’ Division of the French CNL (‘National Books Council’), the Belgian FnRS (‘Fund for Scientific Research’), the Canadian FQRSC (‘Quebec Fund for Research on Society and Culture’), University of California Press, Bloomsbury Academic, Liège University Press and the journals Popular Music (Cambridge University Press), Musurgia (ESKA), Open Cultural Studies (De Gruyter), Revue musicale OICRM (Observatory of Interdisciplinary Research and Creation in Music), Intermédialités (Presse de l’Université de Montréal) and Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale (Gruppo di Analisi e Teoria Musicale), he is the editor of Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today (Ashgate, 2009 ARSC Award for Best Research in Recorded Rock and Popular Music). His research focuses on popular musicians’ relationship with technology and on the determination of popular music, as a tradition, by phonography.
