Originally from a working-class, market-trading background, Mike joined the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education in the early 1990s, gaining a first class in Music and Related Arts. Although a performer throughout his degree (he is a classical pianist by trade), he decided the road of musicology and analysis was for him; and so embarked on a Masters degree at the University of Sussex. After writing a thesis on Crass and the anarcho-punk scene of the 1980s, Mike continued his research at the University of Salford, completing a PhD entitled The Emergence of the Anarcho-Punk Scene of the 1980s. Mike continues to write about punk and has recently co-edited the volume Tales From the Punkside (2014) and Some of Us Scream, Some of Us Shout (2016) with Greg Bull, and has also written on punk pedagogy and Krishnacore. His co-edited The Aesthetics of Our Anger: Anarcho-Punk, Politics, Music (2016) is published by Minor Compositions, an imprint of Autonomedia.