Greg Cotton

Greg’s research examines how folk customs, myth and musicality are used on the Eurovision Song Contest stage by both Ireland and Portugal to create narratives about their respective national identities. His research explores how a playful use of stereotype at Eurovision has been used at various points throughout the contest as a means to express ideas of nationhood and identity within the European community.

His research will argue that ideas of longing are common in both Irish and Portuguese diasporic notions of national identity, which has an overemphasis on pastoral life, folkloric customs and idyllic simplicity on a faraway periphery. This thesis will demonstrate, however, that these diasporic ideas of nationhood were promoted despite being at odds with the material lived experience in both countries. From here, his thesis will explore how influential the respective diasporas were in defining their national identities. This project will compare and bring together Irish and Portuguese ideas of nationhood and diaspora and will apply them within the context of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Having completed an undergraduate degree in BA Media & Modern Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London from 2006 to 2009, Greg returned to academia in 2022 completing an MLitt in British Studies with the UHI Centre for History. This PhD research builds on Greg’s dissertation – ‘Leading Me Home Again: Celtic Tiger Identities in 1990s Eurovision’ – which explored how Irish national identity and expressions of Irish nationhood in the 1990s Celtic Tiger boom were manifested in the Irish entries, hosted events and interval acts in the Eurovision Song Contest 1992–1996.

Publications and conferences:

My heart has no colour: Lusotropicalism and Black Lusophone representation in the Eurovision Song Contest 1994 – 1996.

TMG Journal for Media History, Utrecht University. Forthcoming. Expected publication date: Spring 2025.

Common People Like You: Jarvis, Jekyll and the British Fetishisation of the Working Class

Pons Aelius 16. Newcastle University, May 2024.

‘How Many Times Can We Win and Lose: Can the Celtic Tiger Still Roar at Eurovision?’ (conference paper)

“The ESC in the 21st Century: Eurovision and/or Euro-visions?” Université de Lille, 16-17 May 2024.