Thomas Richard Hilder

About

I am a writer, musician, researcher, teacher, activist, and professor of ethnomusicology at NTNU. Central to my work are questions concerning musical performance, justice, storytelling, kinship, memory, worldmaking, care, digitality, spirituality, and advocacy. My experiments in research, teaching, community engagement, musicianship, and academic leadership are guided by my embodied experiences of migration and queerness. In a perpetually unjust world, I am called by queer notions of hope to not only imagine, but also put into practice – be it in the lecture hall, community music event, ethnographic collaboration, staff meeting – alternative futures, even as the earth burns.

I am indebted to my academic training by inclusive and progressive teachers in the rich intellectual and cultural landscape of London, UK. There, I obtained my PhD (2011) at Royal Holloway, University of London, in the eclectic and interdisciplinary field of ethnomusicology. Since then I have nurtured nourishing scholarly communities in German and Norway, through postdoctoral posts at the Center for World Music, University of Hildesheim (2011-14) and at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen (2015-17). German academia has continued to offer me temporary homes, such as a brief role as guest professor at the Goethe University Frankfurt (2022), and as an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2024-25). Having begun my post at NTNU as Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in 2107, I was promoted to full Professor in 2023. Chiming with post-humanist notions of relationality, I am deeply grateful to the communities committed to feminist, queer, postcolonial and Indigenous politics in the many places I have worked, researched, and performed, communities who have fundamentally shaped my scholarly and artistic practice and ethics.

A central theme in my scholarship is how music is embedded in post-WWII political mobilisations and discourses of human rights. The project that occupies my current passions concerns LGBTQ+ choirs in London, Rome, and Warsaw. Attending to community music, transnational activism, and the transformation of queer European belonging in a post-Stonewall era, this ethnographic study will culminate in a book with a projected publication in 2027. My first monograph ‘Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe’ (2015) focused on the role of Sámi popular music in shaping the politics of sovereignty, time, place, cultural heritage, and transnationalism based on extensive ethnographic research in Northern Norway. Committed to ethnographic methods, my research has a deep historical conscience, is informed by the paradigm of participatory action research, and increasingly explores the potentials of post-qualitative approaches, such as autoethnography.

I was lead editor of the book ‘Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media’ (2017) which drew together the work of prominent international scholars of Indigenous music. Platforming a new generation of queer musicologists, I am co-editor of a forthcoming special issue of the journal Contemporary Music Review (2026). In addition, I have published in prestigious journals and with international presses on an expansive range of topics, such as Indigenous feminism, music therapy, festivals, queer storytelling, television music documentary, transgressive pedagogies, Eurovision, and cultural repatriation. With a strong commitment to accessible and engaging research dissemination, I have also published on a range of Internet platforms, including blogposts, a podcast, and video. I have been invited to speak about my research at academic and public events in numerous countries, including Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and USA. In 2021 I was keynote speaker at the BFE/RMA Research Students' Conference at the University of Cambridge. Later that year, I held the annual keynote lecture of the Music & Minorities Research Center, University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. I have also appeared in newspapers and on radio broadcasts in several countries.

At the heart of my craft is collaboration, community building, and event curation. With Daniele Sofer, I am co-founder and current committee member of the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group, which promotes academic inquiry into issues of gender and sexuality, and creates a support system for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Among our many projects, I led the organisation of our third symposium at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna (2022) and our inaugural summer school at the Humboldt University, Berlin (2025). Currently, I serve on the editorial board of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association (JRMA). In 2015 I sat on the programme committee of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Annual Conference. Other academic events I have co-organised and co-convened include the Grieg Research School (Trondheim, 2018), the Berlin ethnomusicology research group BEAM (2012-15), and the International Doctoral Workshop in Ethnomusicology at the Center for World Music (2012-14). Through all these events I endeavour to network local and international scholars and musicians, create inclusive spaces, and nurture dialogues with broader publics.

In Trondheim, I have been nurturing engaged pedagogical practice, pursuing forms of public facing scholarship, and implementing strategies to transform institutional structures and ethics. I teach BA and MA courses on a range of courses, from a first year introductory course in ethnomusicology, to specialisation courses in music and social justice; music, gender, and sexuality; and ethnomusicological perspectives on Europe. I currently co-supervise six PhD fellows (at NTNU, UiO, and UiT) and several MA and BA students with projects on a broad range of topics, especially those employing ethnographic methods and focusing on issues of gender, sexuality, cultural revitalisation, digitality, and pedagogy. At the Department of Music, I have organised workshops and seminars promoting forms of inclusion, equality, and diversity. I was co-leader of the NTNU LGBTQ+ Staff Network (2022-24). In 2023 I was awarded the NTNU prize for equality and diversity and I take this achievement as a mandate by my university to hold colleagues accountable for ensuring we work collectively against discrimination and for inclusion. I mobilise the terms inclusion and diversity in my current role as programme leader in musicology at the Department of Music as we undergo a period of curriculum development.

Not least, I am a passionate community musician. I play the violin, viola, and piano, and I sing. I’ve participated in Berlin’s LGBTQ+ orchestra, Concentus Alius, since 2011. In 2017 I joined Trondheim’s queer choir, Kor Hen, which I helped build and for which I currently act as committee member. Highlights of my performance career include playing first violin in Monteverdi’s Beatus Vir at Winchester Great Hall (1999), first violin with Concentus Alius in Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in the Philharmonie, Berlin (2024), and singing with Kor Hen at Queer Tunes festival, Copenhagen (2025). While I’ve yet to fulfill an earlier dream to become a composer, I occasionally arrange songs for our choir.

I am in deep gratitude for the care of my musical and academic mentors as well as the labour of a history of activists, without whom I wouldn’t be able to do the work I do in the academy today. My own work in the roles of researcher, pedagogue, mentor, leader, administrator, and colleague, aims to create oases for marginalised communities and norm-breaking academic and artistic practice.

Research

My interdisciplinary research, published in numerous prestigious journals and edited volumes, attends to the centrality of musical performance within minoritized communities of Europe, inspired especially by postcolonial, gender, and queer theory. Building on numerous years of extensive ethnographic research in Norway during and following my PhD, my monograph “Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe” (2015) offers innovative insights into the study of musical Indigeneity by examining the role of Sámi popular music in shaping the politics of sovereignty, time, place, cultural heritage, and cosmopolitanism. This focus on Indigeneity led me to develop a collaborative project with other internationally renowned scholars and performers that resulted in the book, of which I was lead editor, “Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media” (2017), which explores the impact of digital media on Indigenous music through case studies from around the globe, addressing issues of music production, archives, education, virtual reality and post-humanism. Since 2016, I have been conducting multi-sited research in London, Rome, and Warsaw on LGBTQ+ choirs and European belonging. This project – which develops methods in participatory action research and autoethnography – tunes into the significance of choral spaces for shaping local queer communities, the role of communal singing in supporting well-being, and transforming LGBTQ+ rights in 21^st century Europe. Drawing on perspectives from community music therapy, queer citizenship, and transnational human rights, my research has already been disseminated in the journal Music & Minorities. I have just received a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers in order to complete the writing of my next monograph based on this research.

Publications

2024

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2024) LGBTQ+ Choirs, Public Intellectuals, Queer Pedagogies.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Bjørkøy, Ingrid; Kolaas, Solveig Salthammer; Duch, Michael Francis; Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2024) Utfordringer og muligheter innen musikk og utdanning. Cappelen Damm Akademisk Cappelen Damm Akademisk
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
Bjørkøy, Ingrid; Kolaas, Solveig Salthammer; Hilder, Thomas Richard; Duch, Michael Francis. (2024) Utfordringer og muligheter innen musikk og utdanning. Innledningskapittel.
Introduction

2023

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2023) Queer Choirs, Archives of the Self, and Finding Voice in the Refuge of the 1990s. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking
Academic article
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2023) Stories of Songs, Choral Activism and LGBTQ+ Rights in Europe. Music & Minorities (M&M)
Academic article
Halstead, Jill; Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2023) Deep Listening with Pauline Oliveros: The Queer Ear and Radical Care.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper

2022

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2022) LGBTQ+ Choirs, Community Music, Queer Artistic Citizenship in London.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper

2021

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2021) Book Review: Gregory Barz and William Cheng, eds. Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Music & Minorities (M&M)
Book review

2020

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2020) Pedagogical Experiments in the Musicological Classroom. NTNU Samfunn, språk og kultur blogg
Popular scientific article
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2020) Queer Choirs in Corona Crisis. LGBTQ+ Music Study Group Blog
Popular scientific article

2019

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2019) Pride, Protest, Parade: Listening to Queer Voices. NTNU Samfunn, språk og kultur blogg
Popular scientific article
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2019) Sámi Musical Performance, Media and the Politics of Globalization: The Case of Sápmi Sessions.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2019) Hand in Hand Cardiff 2019. Proud Voices
Popular scientific article

2017

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) Nordic Sexual Exceptionalism and Indigenous Rights: Sámi Alternative Visions of Europe at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) Event Review: «Music – Gender – Activism: Transcultural Conversations». The 9th Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Gender. Musikk og tradisjon
Book review
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) Sámi Music.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard; Stobart, Henry; Tan, Shzr Ee. (2017) Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media. University of Rochester Press University of Rochester Press
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) The Politics of Virtuality: Sámi Cultural Simulation through Digital Musical Media.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) Sámi Festivals and Indigeneity.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper

Books

Bjørkøy, Ingrid; Kolaas, Solveig Salthammer; Duch, Michael Francis; Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2024) Utfordringer og muligheter innen musikk og utdanning. Cappelen Damm Akademisk Cappelen Damm Akademisk
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
Hilder, Thomas Richard; Stobart, Henry; Tan, Shzr Ee. (2017) Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media. University of Rochester Press University of Rochester Press
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2015) Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Academic monograph

Part of book/report

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2024) LGBTQ+ Choirs, Public Intellectuals, Queer Pedagogies.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Bjørkøy, Ingrid; Kolaas, Solveig Salthammer; Hilder, Thomas Richard; Duch, Michael Francis. (2024) Utfordringer og muligheter innen musikk og utdanning. Innledningskapittel.
Introduction
Halstead, Jill; Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2023) Deep Listening with Pauline Oliveros: The Queer Ear and Radical Care.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2022) LGBTQ+ Choirs, Community Music, Queer Artistic Citizenship in London.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2019) Sámi Musical Performance, Media and the Politics of Globalization: The Case of Sápmi Sessions.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) Nordic Sexual Exceptionalism and Indigenous Rights: Sámi Alternative Visions of Europe at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) Sámi Music.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) The Politics of Virtuality: Sámi Cultural Simulation through Digital Musical Media.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2017) Sámi Festivals and Indigeneity.
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper

Teaching

Courses

I am committed to a “transgressive” pedagogy (hooks 1994). With careful guidance from feminist (Carmen 1996; Light, Nicholas & Bondy 2015), queer (Gould 2013), and anti-racist pedagogical perspectives (Brookfield 2019), my classroom is a space for sharing, daring, building, and caring. Taking on different roles – lecturer, facilitator, mentor, co-learner – I invite students to bring to the classroom their own embodied experiences and knowledge, and encourage them to reflect and transform their beliefs. The content and materials I employ in class are drawn from my own current and past research, and from cutting edge scholarship by colleagues, often on topical academic and social debates. Together, we embark on a journey that might be unsettling and discomforting for all parties, as we encounter new modes of thinking and being. Catering to different learner-styles, I build classes around a range of activities including lecturing, critical discussions of texts, analysis of audio-visual material, debates, storytelling, interactive on-line activities, and deep listening. The content and format are assembled and curated with great care, shaped by Kolb’s notion of experiential learning (1984), in order to encourage interdisciplinary inquiry, invite critical (self-)reflection, and foster global perspectives on music. Assessment I design mainly consists of both formative and summative tasks, based around written essays, collaborative podcasts and blogposts, combined with other obligatory activities, such as journal writing and essay peer-reviewing. My teaching is thus both student-centred while also focused on nurturing a sense of community: learning is at once individual and communal in nature. This holistic approach not only asks students to take responsibility for their own learning, it furthermore promotes a sense of team-building and learning through community (hooks 1994; 2003; Sandlin, Schultz & Burdick 2010). While my teaching is imbued with deep care for my students, my classes are a site of experimentation and risk (hooks 1994; Biesta 2014; Branlat, Velasquez & Hellstrand 2023) to nurture deep transformational learning.

Supervision

I have supervised many BA and MA students pursuing projects on an immense range of projects. At BA level I have supervised students writing on topics such as Fela Kuti, El Sistema, Klezmer, the Spice Girls, and Indian classical music theory. At MA level I have supervised students writing on topics such as Māori performing arts, community music therapy, hip-hop, and music pedagogy. I am currently supervising five doctoral candidates. I act as main supervisor (70%) for Olaolu Lawal who is researching the Yoruba oriki tradition in Nigeria (2019-present). I was invited to be external supervisor (20%) for one PhD candidate at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT), Ellen Marie Bråthen Steen, writing about contemporary Sámi music and issues of Indigeneity (2020-present). Last year I took on external supervisor (20%) of Daniel Fong Xiong Yang at the University of Oslo (UiO) on his project on queer vocal singers in Norwegian higher education (2023-present). I am also co-supervisor (60%) of my former BA and MA student, Solveig Rivenes Lone, on her PhD project on primary school music education (2023-present). My former MA student, Kim Arvid Tran, has also asked me to be co-supervisor (25%) on his PhD project on Inuit music and marine ecologies in Western Greenland.

Outreach

2023

Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2023) Keynote Lecture: "LGBTQ+ Choirs, Public Intellectuals, Queer Pedagogies". Utfordringer og muligheter innen musikk og utdanning , Trondheim 2023-10-26 - 2023-10-27

2022

Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard; Patch, Holly. (2022) From Musical Asylum to Queer Choral Mobilization. Global Contestations of Women’s and Gender Rights , Bielefeld University 2022-03-05 - 2022-03-12
Lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2022) Collaboration, Community, Care: LGBTQ+ Choirs, Social Inclusion, 21st Century Europe. AKKS Landsmøtet , Trondheim 2022-06-29 -
Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard; Snorre, Sletten; Czerniak, Misza; Chew, Hsien; Kitchens, Mary Ellen; Patch, Holly. (2022) LGBTQ+ Choirs, Care, and Activism since the COVID Pandemic. “Queer, Care, Futures”: 4th Symposium of the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group , University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna 2022-04-22 - 2022-04-24
Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2022) Autoethnographic tales of LGBTQ+ choral performance in Warsaw, London and Rome. Social Acoustics 2022-08-19 -

2021

Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2021) Keynote Lecture: "Imagining Music Scholarship as Radical Care: Stories of Research, Pedagogy, and Activism". BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference , University of Cambridge 2021-01-12 - 2021-01-14
Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2021) LGBTQ+ Choirs and Queer European Citizenship. Queery: Queery/ing Popular Culture 2021-06-10 - 2021-06-10
Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2021) Keynote Lecture: “Imagining Music Scholarship as Radical Care: Stories of research, pedagogy, and activism”. GRS International Summer School 2021 , University of Agder 2021-06-07 - 2021-06-09
Lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard; Sletten, Snorre; Fayant, Amanda Nicole; Nesset, Julie; Thobro, Mette. (2021) Community music making: Mangfold- og inkluderingsarbeid i musikalsk tiltak i Trondheim og Norge. Feminalen , Trondheim 2021-11-13 - 2021-11-13
Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2021) “Transgressive Pedagogies in the Musicological Classroom”. IASPM-Norden Research Seminar Series , Digital 2021-03-25 - 2021-03-25
Lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard; Murray, Tai; Anna, Floren; Eidsvåg, Einar Idsøe. (2021) How to Increase Diversity in Classical Music?. Bergen International Festival 2021-05-28 - 2021-05-28
Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2021) LGBTQ+ Choirs and Queer European Citizenship. Musicological Colloquium , The University of Göttingen 2021-05-12 - 2021-05-12
Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2021) Keynote Lecture: "Choral Activism, LGBTQ+ Rights, Queering Identity in 21st Century Europe". Music & Minorities Research Centre Annual Lecture , University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna 2021-11-11 - 2021-11-11

2020

Lecture

Eidsheim, Nina; Paine, Garth; Musiol, Hanna; Hilder, Thomas Richard; Rasika, Ajotikar; Bergsland, Andreas. (2020) Modalities of Listening, NTNU ARTEC Seminar Series Seminar. NTNU ARTEC Seminar Series , NTNU 2020-09-21 - 2020-09-21
Academic lecture

Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2020) Choral Activism and Queer European Citizenship. Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference 2020-10-21 - 2020-10-31
Lecture

Schulman, Sarah; Raha, Nat; Hellesund, Tone; Branlat, Jennifer; Zarranz, Libe Garcia; Hilder, Thomas Richard. (2020) Pandemics, Archives, Justice: A Webinar with Sarah Schulman. Literature and Cultural History Research Group Seminar , NTNU 2020-11-11 - 2020-11-11

Språkvelger

Thomas Richard Hilder