Leandro is a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Research Scholar funded by the Irish Research Council. He is a graduate of the University of Milan, University of Bergamo and the Milan Music Academy. A geographer with a keen interest in music, he has an Undergraduate Degree in Human and Environmental Geography and Master’s Degree in Planning and Management of Tourism, as well as an Undergraduate Degree in Classical concert flute. At DkIT, he is pursuing a PhD project which investigates combining music, geographical, ethnographical and tourism studies. Leandro is supervised by Dr Daithí Kearney DkIT ,and Dr Ioannis Tsioulakis (QUB).

This prestigious award is an extremely significant achievement for Leandro and Irish Higher Education with previous winners coming from Oxford, Edinburgh, Liverpool Universities and the Royal College of Music amongst others.

All postgraduates who are currently registered at universities and colleges in the U.K. and Ireland and who are members of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music UK and Ireland (IASPM) were eligible for the competition. This prize is awarded for the best essay by a postgraduate student on any aspect of popular music from any disciplinary perspective, with a further prize for the runner up.

The Andrew Goodwin Memorial Prize was established in 2014 as a fitting tribute to his generosity to younger scholars. Goodwin was a key figure in the development of popular music studies. His background was in media and cultural studies: he received his Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from the University of Birmingham and taught for many years in the Department of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco. He was a pioneer of the scholarly analysis of music video and an astute critic of the use of postmodern theory in popular cultural studies. Andrew’s work also reflected his experiences as a working musician and critic. Like Andrew, Leandro’s approach embraces his role as a musician and his experience working in the music industry and tourism sector.

In the past year, Leandro has presented his research at a number of international conferences including the Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology and IASPM-Norden Conference in Finland and the RMA/BFE Postgraduate Conference in Newcastle. He has won bursaries to travel to events in Finland and Spain to further his research and develop his network