Szemere's work focuses on a community of rock musicians that became popular with Hungary's urban youth culture in the early 1980s—groups with names such as the Committee, Control Group, and the Galloping Coroners. Szemere reveals the activities, discourse, and group life of musicians against the background of shifting institutional contexts. By the mid-1990s the change of regime had altered the cultural dynamics of Hungarian society, leading to a complete realignment of the underground music world. Szemere uses the opportunity presented by these developments to challenge one-dimensional representations of popular culture and transition in the region. She also addresses more general questions about the nature and uses of expressive culture, autonomy, social change, and social reproduction.

Up from the Underground is an important addition to the scholarship on the cultural dimension of the most profound societal change in Europe since World War II. It also enriches the increasingly global field of cultural sociology and cultural studies by rethinking its central assumptions and theories in the light of Eastern Europe's unique historical and social experience.