Dr Sam Coley is an Associate Professor (International) for the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University, where he teaches a range of audio production modules. He is a member of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research’s ‘Media and Place’ and ‘Popular Music Studies’ research clusters, with an interest in the field of radio documentary production. His practice-based PhD explored freelance music documentary production in the commercial radio industry, and he has written about fandom and new participatory cultures in radio documentary production. His book Music Documentaries for Radio, published in 2021, explores how the genre has developed technically and editorially and provides an overview of practical production processes. Coley has produced several radio documentaries and presented conference papers about the musicians Prince and David Bowie. He continues to work as a freelance radio documentary producer and has served as a Grand Jury member of the New York Radio Festival since 2012.
