About

University of Edinburgh

Calum White is currently a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, where he is focusing on the representation of political subtext in the soundtracks of the New Hollywood period. He has previously received a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree in Popular Music Research at Goldsmiths, University of London. His principal areas of research is film music, having explored thematic and subtextual resonance in narrative film soundtracks in his undergraduate dissertation. His master’s research involved exploring surrealism, postmodernism and narrative dissonance in mainstream film soundtracks. Additionally, Calum has explored topics surrounding music video and its influence on post-classical cinema, aesthetics in film, and political, philosophical and economic issues in popular music, from Taylor Swift to Bruce Springsteen. Before beginning his studies at Goldsmiths, Calum acted as a composer-for-hire, writing scores for interactive theatrical performances and local businesses, as well as a solo singer-songwriter, playing consistently throughout the UK.

College of William and Mary

Jay Jolles is a PhD student in American Studies at The College of William and Mary. His work lives at the intersection of memory, catastrophe, music, and digital culture. In particular, he is interested in the ways that sound, noise, and music relate to and complicate social relationships, time, and space. Jay has written about Taylor Swift and masculinity, lo-fi beats and neoliberalism, and the cultural phenomenon known as ‘vibes’. He is currently at work on a project about platform and surveillance capitalism that takes as its focus the music-streaming service Spotify.

University of Manchester

Cameron Naylor is an electroacoustic composer and sound artist. His research focus is on compositional methodologies for musical storytelling in fixed media and installation settings. A recipient of the Presidential Doctoral Scholar, he is currently undertaking a PhD at NOVARS Research Centre.

His music has garnered first prize in the Iannis Xenakis International Electronic Music Competition 2023, and the award of distinction at MA/IN23. Further afield his music has been performed and exhibited around the UK and internationally, including the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz, 2023), and the G20 Summit (New Delhi, 2023).

Reader in Music and Audiovisual Media: Goldsmiths, University of London

Holly Rogers is Reader in Music at Goldsmiths, University of London. Before coming to Goldsmiths, she held research fellowships at University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin and a Fulbright Scholarship at the DocFilm Institute in San Francisco. She joined Goldsmiths in 2015 after 6 years as founding director for the Research Center For Audiovisual Research at the University of Liverpool. Holly is interested in the convergence of music with the visual arts and moving image media and is author of Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music (Oxford University Press, 2013) and co-author of a textbook on twentieth-century musics (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Her edited collections include Music and Sound in Documentary Film (Routledge, 2014), The Music and Sound of Experimental Film (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics (Bloomsbury, 2019). She is a founding editor (with Carol Vernallis and Lisa Perrott) of the Bloomsbury book series New Approaches to Sound, Music and Media.

Goldsmiths, University Of London

Regan Bowering is a current PhD student in the Music department at Goldsmiths University of London, where she also completed her MA (2020) and UG studies (2019). Her current research explores the intersections of popular music history, technology and audiovisual culture, with a particular focus on rhythm in relation to aesthetic and affective experience. Regan is co-editor-in-chief of Sonic Scope – a new student journal on audiovisual culture. In 2020, she was named runner up for the IASPM Andrew Goodwin Memorial Prize. Prior to studying, she worked for 9 years in music events.              

Goldsmiths, University Of London

Bryan Dunphy is an audiovisual composer, musician and researcher interested in generative approaches to creating audiovisual art. His work explores the interaction of abstract visual shapes, textures and synthesised sounds. He is interested in exploring strategies for creating, mapping and controlling audiovisual material in real time. His background in music has motivated him to gain a better compositional understanding of the combination of audio and visuals. His recent work has explored the implications of immersive experiences on the established language of screen based audiovisual work. He is currently completing his PhD in art and computational technology at Goldsmiths, University of London.

University of British Columbia

Ellie Berry is a first-year Cinema and Media Studies Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the intersections of Sound, Technology and Deaf Studies; examining the role of sound and sound technology in representations of Sign language, deafness and tinnitus in mainstream film and television.

Goldsmiths, University Of London

Heather Britton is a multi-instrumentalist, filmmaker and audiovisual composer, working across multiple mediums and genres. She has recently completed her MA in Creative Practice at Goldsmiths, where she produced EROS, an audiovisual album. Current projects include her band Calluna, a psychedelic shoe-gaze collaboration, and Vulgaris, her experimental audiovisual work. Her extended research interests and practice covers a broad range of topics from sound design to video editing, with a special interest in synchresis and incongruousness in audiovisual composition, as well as being a cinephile with a passion for experimental filmmaking. She is on the editorial board for the journal Sonic Scope and lives in Brighton with her pet rabbit, Zissou. 

University of Bangor

Holly Shone is a PhD student currently studying at Bangor University in North Wales, having completed her undergraduate and master's degree at the same institution. Primarily a musicologist, Holly is focusing on the music of Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi to understand the contrasting critical and public reception of his music, along with a detailed analysis of select pieces from his oeuvre. Her wider research interests include the reception of ‘classical’ music amongst adolescents, and contemporary postminimalist music. Alongside her research, Holly is a pianist for a number of student ensembles at Bangor University, as well as participating as an alto in the University Chamber Choir.

University College Cork

James Denis Mc Glynn is a conductor, composer and PhD Excellence Scholar at University College Cork. His research explores pre-existing music and narration in the film score. As an undergraduate, James founded the UCC Orchestra, resulting in his receipt of a coveted Quercus Creative & Performing Arts Scholarship. In 2017, he was invited to design and deliver courses at Tianmu Arts Training Centre (Suzhou, China). Having been awarded a CACSSS PhD Excellence Scholarship at UCC, James undertook a three-month research residency at the Irish Culturel Centre in Paris, during which time he participated in Michel Chion’s 2018 ‘Audio-Vision’ workshops. As a performer, James has worked extensively with the Irish Gamelan Orchestra, performing in the International Gamelan Festival (Central Java, Indonesia) in 2018. Recently, IGO performed the score for Gare St. Lazare’s ‘How It Is (Part 2)’, starring Conor Lovett and Stephen Dillane (Game of Thrones, The Crown). The show begins a 17-show residency at the Coronet Theatre, London [rescheduled due to COVID-19].

University of Huddersfield

Jennifer Smith is a PhD candidate currently in her writing up year at the University of Huddersfield. Her PhD research is a critical analysis of the voice as a worldbuilding tool in role-playing video games, specifically identifying voices as identifiers of video game environments and character characteristics. Her MA by research contributed to the understanding of flow and immersion in indie video game soundtracks, and she has co-hosted and organised an RMA Study Day at the University of Huddersfield entitled 'Constructing the Moving Image: Identity and the Soundtrack'.

Columbia University, School of the Arts

Julian Day is an Australian artist, composer and writer based in New York. 

Day’s work frames sound as a social and civic practice that reveals hidden power dynamics by stealth. This plays out in individual artworks (performance, sculpture, installation, video, text) and projects such as Super Critical Mass in which temporary communities articulate public spaces with interdependent actions. 

Day has presented work in the California Pacific Triennial, Asia Pacific Triennial, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Bang On A Can Marathon, MATA, Spitalfields Music Festival, Jewish Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Fridman Gallery, Institute of Modern Art, Artspace and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. 

Day has presented programs and features on ABC and BBC radio, interviewing such leading figures as Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Christian Wolff and Pauline Oliveros, and has published in Tempo Journal, Leonardo Music Journal, Contemporary Music Review, Runway and Limelight. 

Goldsmiths, University Of London

Lee Scott Newcombe is a sound sculptor, sonic painter, temporal choreographer and instrument inventor. Newcombe attended Dartington College of Arts, receiving a BA(Hons) in Music Composition. During this period, he collaborated in multiple projects, performing extensively across the UK and Europe. Newcombe went on to study at the University of Sussex, completing an MA in Music Composition. He formed two performing groups to present his works: eNSembLe and XPERIMENT/PUBLIK, which went on to win the Brighton Fringe art industry showcase award.  

Newcombe currently resides in London, where he is studying for a PhD at Goldsmiths, researching the temporal natures of sound and movement with his own bespoke instruments. He is investigating the concept of 'revolution' in composition and performance and how this differs from repetition through linear sequences resulting in non-linear outcomes. 

Goldsmiths, University Of London

Pete Jiadong Qiang is currently a PhD candidate in arts and computational technology at Goldsmiths, University of London and trained in architecture at Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA). Pete's work focuses on the specific investigation of the bridges and interstices between pictorial, architectural and game spaces. Pete's works range from architectural drawings, paintings, moving images to augmented reality (AR) drawings, virtual reality (VR) paintings and video games. It forms an idiosyncratic cosmotechnics of research methods. It intra-acts of the physical and virtual spaces with ACGN (Anime, Comic, Game and Novel), fandom and digital ethnographic contexts. Pete Jiadong Qiang is often referred as architectural Maximalism. 

Goldsmiths, University of London

Raymond Sookram is a composer, pianist, drummer, writer, associate lecturer and current student in the PhD pathway in Music at Goldsmiths, University of London. His present research concerns the simultaneous receptions of video game music and concept of character when experienced by gamers and viewers alike across several media platforms, a phenomenon known as transmedia. Raymond’s academic focus has broadened within and beyond video game music to encompass major popular musical works and political expression in music. Recent research includes examinations on transmedial sound and parody of the Batman franchise within Level 2 of The Simpsons Game and the argument for politicised speech as a form of popular music. Alongside his research, Raymond has released albums which focus on ambient sound textures and the acceptance of mistakes and wrong notes during improvisations.

University of Turku

Sanna Qvick is a doctoral candidate in musicology at University of Turku (Finland). Her doctoral thesis “Captivating film sounds: Sonic narration and world-making in the soundtracks of Finnish fairy tale films” focuses on the world-making ability of the soundtrack while highlighting its immersion powers. Her research material consists of six Finnish fairy tale films released during a time period over 50 years. Her methodology rests on close reading, narratology, audio-visual and music analysis. The main part of her work has been funded by Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Qvick is part of a research project in Finnish Contemporary Music in the 21st Century: Cultural and Social Significance of Art Music in the Postmodern World (project leader Dr. S. Välimäki, funded by Kone Foundation). Also, she has been a board member of The Finnish Musicological Society (2013–2016).

Case Western Reserve University

Sophie Benn enjoys a multifaceted career as a musicologist and cellist. A PhD Candidate in musicology at Case Western Reserve University, she studies notation and the performing body in dance and music theory in late nineteenth-century and early modernist aesthetics. She has presented at conferences for the Dance Studies Association, the American Musicological Society, the German Studies Association, the Society for American Music, the International Association of Music Librarians, and numerous graduate-level and regional conferences. She serves as the Chair of the Dance Studies Association’s Music and Dance Working Group. Sophie also maintains an active career as a cellist, specializing in modernist and contemporary repertoire. She is a founding Co-Director of Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP), a presenting organization for experimental contemporary musicians and sound artists. Sophie also performs as a baroque cellist, and, drawing on a childhood spent in the ballet studio, has appeared as a baroque dancer in productions of Hippolyte et Aricie, Dido and Aeneas and Acis and Galatea. Sophie is the author of the forthcoming bibliography on the cello for Oxford Bibliographies Online.