Robert is a PhD student focusing on Ethnomusicology while also pursuing a graduate interdisciplinary specialization in Folklore. His research focuses on how punk/alternative musics and culture are used, coded and commodified in Japan—in other words, "what does it mean to be 'punk' in Japan?" His goals at present are to further explore connections between community, values, meanings and use of different facets of punk identity through ethnographic and poetic analysis, as well as investigations of space, place and semiotic meaning.