Dr. Larisa Kingston Mann’s work analyzes the relationship between law, technology, sovereignty and creativity, especially focusing on the ways changing media technologies affect communities’ ability to flourish. She is especially interested in historically marginalized communities’ abilities to create autonomous cultural expression, especially music, and in the capability of music to generate intimacy and decolonize identity among oppressed people.
She also examines how and when cultural practices such as music play important roles in people's material survival and in broader political engagement, and especially the implications that has for how we understand of privacy and surveillance. She has written on dj culture, pirate radio, video cameras, feminist media studies and more.
She has also worked for 30 years as a performing DJ, music writer/blogger and event organizer, with groups like SubversionPHL, HEAVY (NYC), Dutty Artz (NYC and the world), before that Surya Dub (San Francisco), Konstruct (London, UK) and Toneburst (Boston, MA). Her first book is Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright and the Reverberations of Colonial Power (University of North Carolina Press), and her most recent publication is "Electronic Dance Music vs. Copyright: Law as Weaponized Culture" in the Oxford Handbook of Electronic Dance Music.