DrLaura Anderson

Laura Anderson is Assistant Professor in Musicology at University College Dublin. Her research interests include film music and sound design; twentieth-century music; digital archiving and culture; and French music. Laura’s teaching at UCD includes the courses, ‘Music, Sound, and the Moving Image’, ‘Musical Life in Paris: fin de siècle to WWII’, and ‘Music, Culture, and Society’.

Laura completed her PhD, ‘The Poetry of Sound: Jean Cocteau, Film, and Early Sound Design’ at Royal Holloway, University of London (2013). She holds an MMus in Advanced Musical Studies from Royal Holloway and a BA Hons in Music and French from Trinity College Dublin. Previously, Laura was an Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow at Maynooth University where her project ‘Disruptive Soundscapes’ offered a new view of avant-garde post-war French film sound design by examining its relationship with wider cultural developments. Between 2013 and 2016, Laura was the Post-Doctoral Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded project, ‘The Professional Career and Output of Trevor Jones’ at the University of Leeds and she is co-author of the monograph arising out of that project, 'The Screen Music of Trevor Jones: Technology, Process, Production' (Routledge, 2019).

Her publications include articles in 'Music and Letters', 'Twentieth-Century Music', and 'The Journal of Film Music'; book chapters on topics such as Brian Boydell’s music for documentary film; baroque music in 'Les Enfants terribles' (dir. Melville, 1950) and John Williams’s score for 'Angela’s Ashes' (dir. Parker, 1999); and a bibliographic article on film sound design for Oxford Bibliographies Online.

Laura regularly presents her research at international conferences and she has delivered pre-screening talks at the National Media Museum, UK, the Irish Film Institute, and the Alliance Française Dublin. Laura serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of 'Émergences. Son, musique et médias audiovisuels' journal and, from 2020-22, she served as Reviews Editor for 'Twentieth-Century Music' journal (Cambridge University Press).