Associate Professor and Associate Director, Ethel and Herman Midlo International center for New Orleans studies
Connie Atkinson is the Associate Director of the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies and Associate Professor of History. She received her doctorate in music from the University of Liverpool, Institute of Popular Music, the first academic institute in the English- speaking world dedicated to the study of popular music.
Dr. Atkinson was a journalist in New Orleans for many years, at the Courier and Figaro newspapers, and New Orleans Magazine. She edited and published Wavelength, New Orleans Music Magazine, for 11 years.
Dr. Atkinson has published many articles and book chapters related to New Orleans music, including "Armstrong and the Image of New Orleans" in Satchmo Meets Amadeus, ed. Reinhold Wagnleitner, StudienVerlag, Innsbruck, Austria, 2006; "Whose New Orleans?" in Sharon Gmelce, ed., Tourists and Tourism Reader, New York, Waveland Press, 2003; "Music's Place in the Packaging of New Orleans for Tourism," in Simone Abram, Jacqueline D. Waldren and Donald V. L. Macleod, eds., Tourism and Tourism: Identifying with People and Places, Oxford, Berg 1997; and "Creativity, Compromise, and the Tourist Industry in New Orleans" in Helen Taylor, Richard Wilde, eds. Dixie Debates, London, Pluto Press, 1996. Among the books and monographs that she has edited are Nashville of the North: Country Music in Liverpool (1997)and Ceilis, Jigs and Ballads: Irish Music in Liverpool (1994).
Dr. Atkinson serves on the advisory committees of the French Quarter Festival, Satchmo Summerfest, Sweet Home New Orleans, the New Orleans Music Colloquium and several other community organizations.
