Thomas Richard Hilder
Background and activities
I am a writer, teacher, researcher, musician, activist, and associate professor in ethnomusicology at NTNU. My experiments in scholarship, pedagogy, and outreach explore the powerful connections between musical performance and a range of interdisciplinary issues, including justice, community, well-being, digitality, spirituality, advocacy, and care. I obtained my PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2011, and have held postdoctoral posts at the Center for World Music, University of Hildesheim (2011-2014) and at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen (2015-2017). With careful guidance from feminist, queer, and postcolonial perspectives, my work emerges from a pressing desire to question the present and to demand alternative futures.
I am currently researching LGBTQ+ ensembles in London, Rome and Warsaw, exploring the transformation of queer European citizenship and transnational activism in a post-Stonewall era. My monograph ‘Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe’ (2015) examined the role of Sámi popular music in shaping the politics of sovereignty, time, place, cultural heritage, and transnationalism. I was lead editor of the book ‘Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media’ (2017) which drew together the work of leading international scholars of Indigenous music. In addition, I have published articles, book chapters, and blogposts on Indigenous feminism, festivals, television music documentaries, transgressive pedagogies, Eurovision, and the politics of cultural repatriation.
I am co-founder and chair of the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group which promotes academic inquiry into issues of gender and sexuality, creates a support system for members of the LGBTQ+ community, and serves as a consulting body for wider issues of diversity and inclusion. Currently, I serve on the editorial board of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association (JRMA) and contribute to the work of the newly founded Equality, Diversity, Inclusion in Music Studies network (EDIMS). In 2015 I was programme committee member for the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Annual Conference. 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). I am often invited to speak at academic and public events, including as a keynote speaker at the 2021 BFE/RMA Research Students' Conference at the University of Cambridge.
In Trondheim, I have been nurturing engaged pedagogical practice, pursuing forms of social and artistic outreach, and developing ideas to transform institutional structures and ethics. I teach BA and MA courses on ethnomusicology; music, gender and sexuality; music in Europe; music and social justice; and Nordic music. I currently supervise two PhD candidates and several MA and BA students with projects on a range of topics especially those employing ethnographic method. At the Department of Music, I am leader of a working group which explores issues of inclusion, equality, and diversity (RILM). In addition, I am chair of the local queer choir, Kor Hen.
Courses
- MUSV3132 - Music and Social Justice: Artistic Activism and Applied Research in the Twenty-First Century
- MUSV2004 - Nordic Music: From National Romanticism to Sámi Rap
- MUSV2032 - Bachelor Thesis in Musicology
- MUSV1033 - Ethnomusicology: Music, Culture, Globalisation
- MUSV3006 - Master's Thesis in Musicology
- MUSV3125 - Global Perspectives on Music, Gender and Sexuality
- MUSV3127 - Ethnomusicological Perspectives on Europe
Scientific, academic and artistic work
Displaying a selection of activities. See all publications in the database
Journal publications
- (2021) Book Review: Gregory Barz and William Cheng, eds. Queering the Field: Sounding Out Ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Music & Minorities. vol. 1.
- (2020) Pedagogical Experiments in the Musicological Classroom. NTNU Samfunn, språk og kultur blogg.
- (2020) Queer Choirs in Corona Crisis. LGBTQ+ Music Study Group Blog.
- (2019) Hand in Hand Cardiff 2019. Proud Voices.
- (2019) Pride, Protest, Parade: Listening to Queer Voices. NTNU Samfunn, språk og kultur blogg.
- (2017) Event Review: «Music – Gender – Activism: Transcultural Conversations». The 9th Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Gender. Musikk og tradisjon.
- (2016) Book Review: Stephen Amico: Roll over, Tchaikovsky! Russian popular music and post-Soviet homosexuality. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2014. Ethnomusicology Forum.
- (2016) Sámi Popular Music, Indigenous Feminism, Environment: Mari Boine as Grenzgängerin. Jahrbuch Musik und Gender. vol. 8.
- (2015) Book Reveiw: Christine Dettmann. 2012. Ein anderes Gesicht: Lokale brasilianische Musiker in Lissabon. Intercultural Music Studies, 16. Berlin: VWB—Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung. Journal of World Popular Music. vol. 2 (1).
- (2012) Repatriation, Revival and Transmission: The Politics of a Sámi Musical Heritage. Ethnomusicology Forum. vol. 21 (2).
- (2012) Website Review: Soundscapes Rostock: An Ethnomusicological View of City Sound. Yearbook for Traditional Music. vol. 44.
Books
- (2017) Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media. University of Rochester Press. 2017. ISBN 978-1-58046-573-1.
- (2015) Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2015. ISBN 978-0-8108-8895-1.
Part of book/report
- (2019) Sámi Musical Performance, Media and the Politics of Globalization: The Case of Sápmi Sessions. In the Balance: Indigeneity, Performance, Globalization.
- (2017) Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media. Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media.
- (2017) Nordic Sexual Exceptionalism and Indigenous Rights: Sámi Alternative Visions of Europe at the Eurovision Song Contest. Performing Sexual Identities: Nationalities on the Eurovision Stage.
- (2017) Sámi Festivals and Indigeneity. The Oxford Handbook of Popular Music in the Nordic Countries.
- (2017) Sámi Music. Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume XI Genres: Europe.
- (2017) The Politics of Virtuality: Sámi Cultural Simulation through Digital Musical Media. Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media.
Others
- (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.
- (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.
- (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.
- (2021) LGBTQ+ Choirs and Queer European Citizenship. Queery: Queery/ing Popular Culture . Queery; 2021-06-10 - 2021-06-10.
- (2021) LGBTQ+ Choirs and Queer European Citizenship. Musicological Colloquium ; The University of Göttingen. 2021-05-12 - 2021-05-12.
- (2021) “Transgressive Pedagogies in the Musicological Classroom”. IASPM-Norden Research Seminar Series . IASPM; Digital. 2021-03-25 - 2021-03-25.
- (2021) How to Increase Diversity in Classical Music?. Bergen International Festival ; 2021-05-28 - 2021-05-28.
- (2021) Community music making: Mangfold- og inkluderingsarbeid i musikalsk tiltak i Trondheim og Norge. Feminalen ; Trondheim. 2021-11-13 - 2021-11-13.
- (2020) Modalities of Listening, NTNU ARTEC Seminar Series Seminar. NTNU ARTEC Seminar Series . NTNU ARTEC; NTNU. 2020-09-21 - 2020-09-21.
- (2020) Choral Activism and Queer European Citizenship. Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference ; 2020-10-21 - 2020-10-31.
- (2020) Pandemics, Archives, Justice: A Webinar with Sarah Schulman. Literature and Cultural History Research Group Seminar . NTNU ISL, TransLit & ILU, Gender Hub, LGBTQ+ Study Music Gr.; NTNU. 2020-11-11 - 2020-11-11.