ABOUT

Michael L. Austin is currently senior lecturer in music production at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, England (about 13 miles northwest of Liverpool), where he teaches courses in music production, performance, and research. Prior to his appointment at Edge Hill, he served as Founding Director of the School of Music and Associate Professor of Music at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, where he teaches course in audio production, music technology, and music industry studies. He also previously served as Associate Professor of Media, Journalism, and Film and founding coordinator for the Interdisciplinary Studies Program in the Cathy Hughes School of Communications at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He received a B.M. in Music Composition from the University of Texas at San Antonio, a M.M. in Music Theory from the University of Texas at Austin, and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Humanities - Aesthetic Studies (specializing in Arts and Technology/Music) from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Dr. Austin is a member of the Laboratoire Musique et Informatique de Marseille [MIM] (Music and Informatics Laboratory of Marseille, France) and a specialist committee member of the Ausschuss zu ‚Musik, Marketing & Brands‘ [Working Group on Music, Marketing and Brands], Gesellschaft für Musikwirtschafts - und Musikkulturforschung e.V. (GAMM) [The Society for Music Economics and Music Cultural Research], Berlin, Germany. He is editor of Music Video Games: Performance, Politics, and Play (2016, Bloomsbury) and is currently working on a monograph on representations of subalterity in music videos (Oxford). His presentations and publications include research on  sonic culture, sound and music in emerging media (especially video games and music videos), music analysis, and encyclopedia entries on computer music, digital audio, brand image, and computer models of music (psychology). He also serves on the editorial boards of the College Music Society’s journal College Music Symposium, the online journal Evental Aesthetics, and the College Music Society's Culture Expressions in Music book series. His work as a sound engineer and producer has been released on the Albany Records label. He is also the secretary and founding board member of the international Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Video Games.

Prior to his appointment at Howard, Dr. Austin was Director of Music Technology and Audio Recording at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, MO, where he taught courses in music technology, audio recording and engineering, music business, and graduate courses in digital media; he also served as associate director of the St. Joseph Community Chorus. Austin was lecturer in digital sound design at the University of Texas at Dallas and has taught courses in music theory, music history, and commercial music at UT Austin and Collin College.

He has performed with various groups throughout the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Brazil, including Dallas Pro Musica, UT Austin’s Early Music Ensemble, the Texas Bach Choir, the UTSA Lyric Theatre, UT Dallas’ Musica Nova Ensemble, the professional choirs at the Washington National Cathedral, and other university choirs and ensembles. As an active composer/arranger, Austin has written for chamber ensembles, choirs, soloists, film, and new media. Austin's work as a sound artist has been displayed at a number of galleries, including the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Gallery and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and the Dallas Museum of Art. He currently serves as Organist and Choir Director at St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Bethesda, MD.

Austin has received numerous grants and fellowships, including a travel grant funded and support through FRAME (French Regional & American Museum Exchange) and funded by the Annenberg Foundation to lead composition workshops at the Université du Sud Toulon Var, Ingémédia Department, in Toulon, France, and intramural grants for research in audio technology and new media. He has also been the recipient of other named fellowships and scholarships in music theory and performance. 

Austin was born in Dumas, TX and currently resides in Washington, D.C.