Dr 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: 

• Music, social reproduction and the politics of care
• Race and gender in popular music and auditory culture
• Theories of noise and its use as a musical resource 
• Tinnitus, listening and the sonic arts 

My most recent monograph, The Sonic Surrogate: Music, Technology and the Crisis of Reproduction (UC Press, 2026) examines the proliferation of 'caring' musical tools - including smart speakers, sleep apps, and prenatal sound systems - that promise a better life through sound. Situating these devices in relation to shifting gendered, racial and global divisions of labour, the making of the modern family, and the politcal economy of music, The Sonic Surrogate interrogates how sound, music and their associated technologies came to be a means of automating caregiving, the management of the household, and the production of the 'future-child'. 

I have also published the monograph Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism (Bloomsbury 2017), which theorizes noise in terms of affect so as to better understand its use as a musical resource; and in 2013, I co-edited the edited collection Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience (Bloomsbury, 2013). 

Between 2020-2024, I was 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. This project has led to the development of Sharing Tinnitus: A Creative Toolkit for Tinnitus Support Groups, a freely available resource for tinnitus support groups that provides instruction for creative activities that can help people talk about, reflect upon and understand their tinnitus in new ways. 

 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 feminism. Our forthcoming monograph (Sonic Cyberfeminisms, Goldsmiths Press, 2027) draws upon cyberfeminism and its engagements with technology, alongside examples from popular music and sound art, to consider how gender is reproduced, reconfigured and potentially undone via sound, music and aurality .   

My research has been presented internationally in various academic and public forums, including on BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed and the podcast Phantom Power; 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 Royal Musical Association conference, Punk Scholars Network, The Future Sound of Pop Music conference and for Capacious: Affect Inquiry/Making Space conference.  

Teaching interests

My teaching interests concern the cultural study of music. I was the module chair of A874: MA Music Part 2 and have been a member of the module team for Central Questions in the Study of Music A342. 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 was the lead of a FASSTEST teaching scholarship project exploring how issues relating to whiteness, race and colonialism can be more effectively incorporated into current Music teaching materials at the Open University.

I would welcome expressions of interest from prospective PhD students in the (broad) areas of popular music, gender and/or race; affect theory, music and/or auditory culture; the cultural politics of sound technologies; and noise in/as music.