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Dr Marie Thompson

profile picture of marie thompson, wearing round framed glasses and stripey red top against a blue background

Profile summary

  • Central Academic Staff
  • Senior Lecturer in Popular Music
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
  • School of Arts & Humanities
  • Music
  • marie.thompson

Professional biography

I joined the Open University as a Lecturer in Popular Music in 2020. Prior to this, I held a position in the University of Lincoln's School of Film and Media, where I taught on Sound and Music Production and Media Studies degree programmes. I gained my PhD in 2014 from Newcastle University's International Centre for Music Studies. I also hold a BA (Hons) in Music/Popular Music and an MA in Musicology from the University of Liverpool.  

Research interests

My main areas of research interest are: 

- Gender, race and auditory culture 

- Musical interventions into pregnancy, reproductive labour and social reproduction 

- Theories of noise and its use as a musical resource 

- Tinnitus, aural difference and musical listening

My monograph Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism was published by Bloomsbury in 2017, and I am the co-editor of Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience (Bloomsbury, 2013). Other recent publications have appeared in Contemporary Music Review, Textual Practice, Women and Music and Parallax. More information about these can be found under the Publications tab. 

I am the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded project Tinnitus, Auditory Knowledge and the Arts, which explores how the arts might help to enrich understandings of tinnitus and the diverse ways it affects listeners. I am also the co-founder (with Annie Goh) of Sonic Cyberfeminisms, an ongoing project that critically and creatively interrogates the relationship between gender, sound, technology and feminist practice.  

 My research has been presented internationally in various academic and public forums, including on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed; at music festivals including CTM (Berlin), MUTEK (Montreal), DICE (Berlin) and Noiseexistance (Hamburg); at cultural institutions including the British Library, Tate Liverpool and the ICA; and as keynote presentations for the Punk Scholars Network, The Future Sound of Pop Music conference and for Capacious: Affect Inquiry/Making Space conference.  I will be delivering the keynote Peter le Huray lecture at the Royal Musical Association’s 2020 Annual Conference.

Teaching interests

My teaching interests concern the cultural study of music. I have been the module chair of A874: MA Music Part 2 and a member of the module team for Central Questions in the Study of Music. I was the lead author of the short course AXS006: Dolly Parton: Music, Identity and Culture , which introduces Parton and her music in relation to various social, cultural and musical issues. I also produced teaching materials on the politics of sound systems for AXS005: Sound Systems in Popular Music: from Jamacian Dub to Stadium Rock. 

I am currently leading a FASSTEST teaching scholarship project concerned with the ‘white racial frame’ in music studies. This has explored how issues relating to whiteness, race and colonialism can be more effectively incorporated into current Music teaching materials at the Open University.

 

 

Externally funded projects

Transfer In - Tinnitus, Auditory Knowledge and the Arts
RoleStart dateEnd dateFunding source
Lead01 Jul 202002 Feb 2024AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

The aim of this project is to interrogate the multidirectional relationship between tinnitus and the arts, with the aim of enriching understandings of tinnitus and diversifying dominant cultural tropes about it. Around 30% of people experience tinnitus at some point in their lives, with prevalence increasing with age. In the humanities and in popular discourse, descriptions of tinnitus rarely extend beyond evocations of ringing in the ears. Yet experiences of tinnitus are varied and variable. The project proposes that the arts - as a field concerned with self-expression and sensory, subjective and contextual experience - may serve a key role in developing alternative methods, frameworks and terminologies that can effectively account for tinnitus' variations, resulting in better understandings of the diverse ways in which tinnitus is experienced by listeners. In this project, tinnitus is framed as an auditory sensation with diverse manifestations and a critical lens through which to re-evaluate understandings of auditory experience in the arts and humanities. The objectives are explored through four questions: 1) how can the creative arts generate and mediate knowledge about tinnitus? 2) How does tinnitus transform concepts of listening, embodiment, noise and soundscape? 3) How might practice-based arts research be used to develop alternative approaches to tinnitus, enriching understandings of the condition? 4) How might the creative arts be beneficial to the tinnitus community?

Publications

Introduction: The aesthetics of tinnitus (2024-01-22)
Thompson, Marie
The Senses and Society, 19(1) (pp. 1-2)

Mapping tinnitus (2024)
Thompson, Marie
The Senses and Society, 19(1) (pp. 44-66)

"Is your baby getting enough music?" Musical interventions into gestational labor (2022)
Drott, Eric and Thompson, Marie
Women and Music: a Journal of Gender and Culture, 26 (pp. 125-147)

‘Your Womb, the Perfect Classroom’: Prenatal Sound Systems and Uterine Audiophilia (2021-03-01)
Thompson, Marie
Feminist Review, 127(1) (pp. 73-89)

Sonic Cyberfeminisms: Introduction (2021-03-01)
Goh, Annie and Thompson, Marie
Feminist Review, 127(1) (pp. 1-12)

Sounding the Arcane: Contemporary Music, Gender and Reproduction (2020-09)
Thompson, Marie
Contemporary Music Review, 39(2) (pp. 273-292)

Spinoza and musical power (2019)
Thompson, Marie
Textual Practice, 33(5) (pp. 803-820)

Whiteness and the Ontological Turn in Sound Studies (2017)
Thompson, Marie
Parallax, 23(3) (pp. 266-282)

To soothe or remove? Affect, revanchism and the weaponized use of classical music (2017)
Thompson, Marie
Communication and the Public, 2(4) (pp. 272-283)

Feminised Noise and the ‘Dotted Line’ of Sonic Experimentalism (2016)
Thompson, Marie
Contemporary Music Review, 35(1) (pp. 85-101)

Productive Parasites: Thinking of Noise as Affect (2012-12-03)
Thompson, Marie
Cultural Studies Review, 18(3) (pp. 13-35)

Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism (2017-02-09)
Thompson, Marie
ISBN : 9781501313301 | Publisher : Bloomsbury | Published : New York

A Conversation on Race, Sound, and the Im/possibility of Decolonised Listening (2022-05-27)
Lee, Peggy Kyoungwon; Oliveira, Pedro; Osman, Shanti Suki and Thompson, Marie
In: Ismaiel-Wendt, Johannes Salim and Schoon, Andi eds. Postcolonial Repercussions: On Sound Ontologies and Decolonised Listening. Sound Studies (pp. 45-58)
Publisher : transcript Verlag | Published : Bielefeld

Sonic Feminisms: Doing Gender in Neoliberal Times (2020-12-10)
Thompson, Marie
In: Bull, Michael and Corbussen, Marcel eds. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies
ISBN : 9781501338779 | Publisher : Bloomsbury

Sound Studies (2020)
Thompson, Marie
In: van Orden, Kate ed. Music
Publisher : Oxford Bibliographies

Gendered sound (2018-10-29)
Thompson, Marie
In: Bull, Michael ed. The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies. Routledge Media and Cultural Studies Companions (pp. 108-117)
ISBN : 978-1-138-8514-3 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

Experimental music and the question of what can a body do? (2017)
Thompson, Marie
In: Moisala, Pirkko; Leppänen, Taru; Tiainen, Milla and Väätäinen, Hanna eds. Musical Encounters with Deleuze and Guattari (pp. 149-168)
ISBN : 9781501316753 | Publisher : Bloomsbury

Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience (2013-02-28)
Thompson, Marie and Biddle, Ian eds.
ISBN : 9781441114679 | Publisher : Bloomsbury | Published : New York