Dr. Jon Stewart
Course Leader, Music Business and MA Popular Music Practice
Jon is the guitarist for semi-legendary indie band The Wedding Present and Britpop stars Sleeper, who released four UK Top 20 albums and nine UK Top 40 singles with top UK record producer Stephen Street. Both groups are still very active on tour and in the studio. Sleeper’s latest album The Modern Age, was a UK Top 20 hit in 2019 and Jon’s tour dates last year featured two headline shows at the O2 Kentish Town Forum in London, one with each of his bands.
Recent main stage festival appearances include Latitude (alongside Rag’n’Bone Man and Wolf Alice), Kew The Music in London (supporting Garbage), Tramlines in Sheffield (with Lewis Capaldi and Chic) and Cool Britannia at Knebworth. Session credits include Grammy Award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter KD Lang and former Spice Girl, Mel C. Jon is also co-founder and partner in film and television music supervision company Music4Movies.org.
A prolific author and researcher, Jon holds a PhD from the University of Southampton and has published on popular music and popular culture in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals and academic books. Examples include Brian Eno (Continuum, 2019), The Arena Concert (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) and Representations of Peace and Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Elsewhere, his writing has appeared in feature articles for The Guardian and a column in Guitarist Magazine that ran for nine years (2002-2010).
