Gascia Ouzounian

Gascia Ouzounian is a historian and theorist of sound whose work bridges sound studies, architecture and urban studies, and science and technology studies. She is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Oxford. Her first book, Stereophonica (MIT Press), traces how ideas of spatial sound and auditory perception evolved alongside developments in sound technology, experimental music, and scientific research in acoustics and psychoacoustics from the 19th century to the present. Her forthcoming book, The Trembling City, reimagines cities as vibrational territories shaped by warfare, occupation, and mass violence. She is also editing a volume on critical approaches to sonic urbanism in theory and design.

Ouzounian leads the ERC-funded project Sonorous Cities: Toward a Sonic Urbanism (soncities.org), and co-founded Recomposing the City, an initiative with architect Sarah Lappin that brings together architects, urbanists, and sound artists. 

Her collaborative projects—Concrete Dreams of Sound, Scoring The City (scoring.city), and Quiet Urgency: Designing Urban Sonic Ecologies—have been staged in cities including Beirut, Berlin, London, and Yerevan. Her writing has appeared in journals across music, architecture studies, and visual culture, and she is a frequent speaker on topics ranging from sonic urbanism and historical sound technologies to the sonic aspects of urbicide, earwitnessing, and sound in conflict.