Melissa Van Drie

Marie-Curie Research Fellow University of Copenhagen / Sound Studies Lab.
Research Focus
  • The sounds of cooking and food-making;
  • 19th century epistemologies of sound
  • 19th century audio technologies and artefacts: théâtrophone, phonograph, telephone, stethoscope.
  • Sonic practices and performances of listening in the arts and sciences (19th- 21st c)
  • Scenographies of the senses (theatre)
  • Histories of bodily practices and techniques
  • Senses in medicine (medical humanities)
  • Studies of affective and sonic archives
  • Practice-based sonic research and writing methods
  • Urban studies and architecture
   
Curriculum Vitae

I work across the disciplines of theatre, music, and the history of science and technology to write cultural histories of sound and listening. Currently I work on my MSCA funded "Sounds Delicious" Project that studies sound, listening and sonic practices in Nordic and French cooking (19th-21st Centuries, EU grant 753565). The project examines how thinking through sound can help craft new sensibilities to and alternative narratives of food production and environmental relations. I obtained a Master in Musicology from NYU and a PhD in Theatre Studies from the Sorbonne-Paris 3. I've been a postdoc research fellow in multiple European institutions:  various projects in Europe, working on  at institutes such as the EHESS, the CNRS, the BnF (Paris), the STS department at the University of Maastricht, and Cambridge.

Selected Publications
  • “The Food”  in the Bloomsbury Handbook of the Anthropology of Sound, H. Schulze (ed.) 2020.
  • “Hearing through the Théâtrophone: Sonically Constructed Spaces and Embodied Listening in Late 19th Century French Theatre” (Sound Effects, 2015).
  • “Training the Auscultative Ear: Medical Textbooks and Teaching Tapes (1950–2010)” (The Senses and Society, 2013); “Sharing Sound: Teaching, Learning and Researching Sonic Skills” (Sound Studies, 2016, co-authored with A. Harris).