Abstract
Author of numerous books and articles, and founding editor of the pre-eminent audience studies journal Participations, Martin Barker is a major thinker, researcher and academic leader in the field of audience research. Barker’s work has been a model for researchers within the performing arts for the possibility of taking talking to audiences seriously and for advocating its value and validity within academic research. In this wide-ranging interview he talks to Matthew Reason about his own work and how his position is as an outsider to the performing arts, ‘watching over a wall into a field that I’m interested in.’ The conversation explores methodological and ideological questions relating to audience research, starting with its origins and some of the suspicions and disciplinary boundaries that have hindered its development. Barker also discusses the value of asking risky or unusual questions, how to respond to the accusation that it is all a matter of ‘interpretation,’ and the function or purpose of audience research.
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