Born 1951 in West London, Dick Hebdige became a Mod in the middle of the sixties. He was a passionate member of this very exclusive British youth movement. Dick Hebdige first encountered punk during his studies in the Center of Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham which was founded in 1964 and devoted to working class and minority culture and its objection to hegemonic cultural standards with subculture.

He wrote a book called "Subculture: The Meaning of Style": It was translated into nine languages and became an international bestseller with over a 100.000 copies sold.

Dick Hebdige is currently teaching at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He is famous for giving entertaining lectures: Like a DJ he is mixing scientific texts with slides, music- and video footage. At the Punk! Kongress Dick Hebdige will talk about his personal experiences and the results of his latest research.

Hebdiges idea was to apply his observations on Punk. Between 1978 and 1979 he worked on his famous book "Subculture: The Meaning of Style". While punk was already declared to be dead by its founders in Great Britain, Hebdige tried to describe why punk was a cultural earthquake, an upheaval that had and has an actual impact on society. He examined a process in punk, where objects become symbols, have an appalling effect on society and society reacts by commercializing those objects to reestablish a so called normal condition.

Youth culture is a subject that Hebdige is still engaged in: In his second book "Cut'n Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music" from 1986 he wrote about reggae and rasta culture. Furthermore he taught at different academies in Western Europe, the US and Australia and wrote numberless articles about critical and cultural theory, contemporary art, media and music. He is currently teaching a the University of California in Santa Barbara.

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