Kate Lacey is Head of  Media and Cultural Studies in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex. She did her PhD in German History at Liverpool on the history of women's radio in Germany during the Weimar Republic and Third Reich She is the author of Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio and the Public Sphere 1923-1945 (1996) and has published widely on broadcasting history. Her current research centres on the history and theory of listening in the public sphere, and her book Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age will be published by Polity in 2012.