How Jews and Heavy Metal Taught Me the Value of Being Boring

Ken Talks

Date: June 7, 2026

Theme: Personal/Memoire

Category: Other talks (selected), Videos

Love & Disappointment: Peter Gabriel Live

The Quietus

Keith Kahn-Harris is haunted by a childhood humiliation as he experiences the 2023 live version of Pater Gabriel. All photographs by York Tillyer

Publication Date: June 21, 2023

Theme: Metal Music and Culture, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays, Music reviews

Baseball in the killing fields of Kutno

The New European

Understandably, many Jews have reservations abut Poland. Today, baseball is helping change that, one game at a time

Publication Date: June 7, 2023

Theme: Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Personal/Memoire, Small worlds

Category: Journalism and essays

My troubled relationship with Jewish youth culture

5 x 15 Stories / Writer's Mosaic event on Jews and multiculturalism

Probably the most personal talk I've ever done and discusses a deeply traumatic episode that I experience as an adolescent. I also discuss how and why things got better!

Date: February 1, 2023

Theme: Personal/Memoire

Category: Other talks (selected)

Manifesto for the weary: can rest be radical?

Prospect

Workplace culture in a capitalist society constantly demands more of us. A new book suggests that most revolutionary response could be to just stop

Publication Date: December 8, 2022

Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Book reviews, Journalism and essays

Jewish Velvet: A Touching Memoire

JewThink

Publication Date: October 12, 2022

Theme: Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

Letting Go of Hope Might Be a Good Thing – My Conversation with Keith Kahn Harris

Precarious Podcast

Date: September 8, 2022

Theme: Personal/Memoire

Category: Podcasts

I gave up hope of a cure for my chronic condition. And it’s made me happier than ever before

The Guardian

For 30 years, I tried to ‘fight’ it. In the end, I found relief in embracing my identity as a person with a disability

Publication Date: July 28, 2022

Theme: Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

They Were Not Evil: The Loveable Raconteurs Of NWOBHM

The Quietus

Keith Kahn-Harris reviews Michael Hann’s Denim and Leather: The Rise and Fall of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and revisits his long-lost NWOBHM past

Publication Date: February 19, 2022

Theme: Metal Music and Culture, Personal/Memoire

Category: Book reviews, Journalism and essays

The Babel Message

Village Raw

In a celebration of linguistic diversity, author Keith Kahn-Harris used the lockdown to investigate the warning messages found inside Kinder Surprise Eggs

Publication Date: November 2021

Theme: Language, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

How a Kinder Egg led to a surprising linguistic journey

The Big Issue

Author and sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris had a lockdown project that cracked the joy of languages

Publication Date: November 24, 2021

Theme: Language, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

I’m so obsessed with Kinder Eggs, I translated the packaging into hundreds of languages including Klingon

The iPaper

An extract from The Babel Message

Publication Date: November 16, 2021

Theme: Language, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

Oh, the Guilt

The Battleground

Tough times for fun books.

Publication Date: November 8, 2021

Theme: Language, Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

Booker’s Dozen @ Keith Kahn-Harris

The Pensive Quill

Publication Date: April 7, 2021

Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Book reviews, Interviews

Smoke your way to hopelessness

Sick

Publication Date: July 1, 2020

Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

YouTube Reveries

Tortoise: Letters from Lockdown

From Basque sports to military ration packs, Keith Kahn-Harris has been swept along by algorithms during the pandemic.
[Also available as audio]

Publication Date: June 2, 2020

Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

The sweet scent of spiritual sanctuary

The Tablet

Publication Date: May 1, 2020

Theme: Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

Finding Ferdy B

A Lockdown Miscellany

On the wistful pleasure of turning a chance encounter into a minor obsession

Publication Date: April 15, 2020

Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

A dull sort of ache

Boundless

Keith Kahn-Harris on the modern anti-semitism game he doesn't want to join

Publication Date: June 11, 2019

Theme: Antisemitism, Racism, Hate, Jews, Judaism and Jewishness, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

What’s worse than rejection?

Boundless

Silent rejection, argues one writer, which becomes a never-ending - and infuriating - act of waiting

Publication Date: December 2018

Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

On watching my children listening to music while doing their homework

Riffs Journal

Publication Date: November 2018

Theme: Music, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journal articles, Journalism and essays

What going to a Metallica concert with my daughter taught me about modern infrastructure

Medium

Utopia and dystopia all in one evening

Publication Date: October 26, 2017

Theme: Best Of, Culture, Metal Music and Culture, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

Towards an Exhausted Sociology

The Sociological Review Blog

Publication Date: October 25, 2017

Theme: Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

Excuse all the blood

So Fi Zine

My first attempt at fiction! Based very very loosely on my PhD fieldwork on the Israeli metal scene.

Publication Date: June 24, 2017

Theme: Israel/Palestine, Metal Music and Culture, Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

Labour’s antisemitism row is scaring me (but, perhaps, not for the reasons you might expect)

Medium

Publication Date: May 5, 2016

Theme: Antisemitism, Racism, Hate, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

The Pleasures, Pain and Promise of Sociological Work Outside the Academy

Medium

Adapted from a talk given at the British Sociological Association Sociologists Outside Academia Group’s 10th Anniversary Event. It was first published on The Sociological Imagination blog.

Publication Date: December 11, 2015

Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

My Top Ten Musical Anxieties of 2014

Souciant

Publication Date: December 16, 2014

Theme: Metal Music and Culture, Music, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays, Music reviews

The pleasure and pain of crowd funding

The Literary Platform

Reflections on the experience of watching the crowdfunding campaign for 'The Best Waterskier in Luxembourg' stall

Publication Date: August 25, 2012

Theme: Personal/Memoire, The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg

Category: Journalism and essays

Slayer and me

Souciant

Publication Date: June 14, 2012

Theme: Best Of, Metal Music and Culture, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

How a childhood spent collecting building societies taught me to celebrate the power of obscurity

Ignite London

Date: November 5, 2011

Theme: Personal/Memoire, Small worlds, The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg

Category: Other talks (selected)

Deserving an Audience: The Limits of Scholarly Publishing

Souciant

Publication Date: September 6, 2011

Theme: Personal/Memoire, The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg

Category: Journalism and essays

Why we are all worth a mix of self-love and self-hate

The Guardian

A measured dose of self-hate helps transform us into better people

Publication Date: June 11, 2011

Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

University cuts could expose iniquity of casual contracts

The Guardian

Cuts heap anxiety on the already insecure lives of academics. Hopefully the post-cuts university world can resist casualisation

Publication Date: September 18, 2010

Theme: Miscellaneous, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

Safe and sound

Times Higher Education

'The insecure scholar', one of THE's online columnists, calls for an academy that offers all scholars dignity and security
[This was the final column that I wrote in this anonymous series]

Publication Date: March 18, 2010

Theme: Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

My dream came true and I’m still not satisfied: the journey of a Metal Jew

Ignite London

Date: March 2, 2010

Theme: Jews and Metal, Personal/Memoire

Category: Other talks (selected)

The Insecure Scholar

Times Higher Education

From October 2009 to March 2010 I wrote an anonymous weekly column for Times Higher Education. In the column I discussed the joys and tribulations of insecure employment within academia. Since these columns were published my life has moved on and I don't necessarily think the same way about academia as I did then. However, I remain proud of the columns I wrote and anyone who is interested can find them compiled in a single pdf via the link before (or on the Times Higher Education website)

Publication Date: October 2009 - March 2010

Theme: Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

Journey into the Known

‘Beneath the Remains – Translations of Estrangement and the Politics of Survival’ at arttransponder, Berlin

The link is to an updated audio-visual essay, from 2015, of my original presentation at this event.

Publication Date: November 9, 2009

Theme: Metal Music and Culture, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

It’s not just for ME I ask

Times Higher Education

Academia needs to be more accommodating to those who cannot or choose not to work full time, argues Keith Kahn-Harris

Publication Date: May 15, 2008

Theme: Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays

What it really means to be healthy

The Guardian

After a bout of glandular fever at university, Keith Kahn-Harris developed chronic fatigue syndrome, from which he still suffers. He explains how this debilitating and misunderstood illness has changed his life for ever

Publication Date: May 6, 2008

Theme: Best Of, Personal/Memoire

Category: Journalism and essays