Research profile >> Tom Rice
Anthropology – Hearing – Institutional Soundscapes – Sonic Ethnography – Auditory Knowledge – Stethoscopic Listening – Radio Documentary – Sound Art – Sound in Film
My key research interests are (musical and non-musical) sound and listening. As an undergraduate I conducted an ethnographic study of hospital soundscapes, and followed this up in my PhD fieldwork by spending a year as an Honorary Observer at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. I shadowed doctors and medical students, exploring the ways in which they use and apply auditory knowledge in their work. My particular focus was on stethoscopic listening or ‘auscultation’, and I have written about this ‘way of listening’ from a number of theoretical perspectives. I am particularly interested in the challenge of writing about sound, and in the use of sound recordings in ethnographic representation.
After completing my thesis at Goldsmiths College I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and at the present time am a Teaching Fellow at the University of Exeter. I have published a number of articles on sound and listening including pieces in The Senses and Society, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Anthropology Today, Critique of Anthropology and even The Erotic Review. I am co-editor, with Georgina Born, of the edited volume Music, Sound and the Reconfiguration of Public and Private Space, scheduled for publication in 2011.
E-mail: contacttomrice@googlemail.com