Kate Galloway

Biography

My research examines practices of remixing, reuse, and remediation across digital and popular music cultures, with particular attention to sustainability, ecological listening, and the circulation of sonic materials across media platforms. My forthcoming monograph, Remix, Reuse, Recycle: Music, Media Technologies, and Remediating the Environment (Oxford University Press, 2026), explores how artists and communities repurpose sound and media to engage environmental knowledge and ecological concerns.

I am also completing my second monograph, Star Power, Paw Power: Animals, Audiovisuality, and Identity in Pop Stardom, which examines how artists—including Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Mitski, Freddie Mercury, Rufus Wainwright, and Taylor Swift—mobilize pets and animal symbolism to construct star personas, foster fan connection, and shape cultural narratives in contemporary celebrity culture. More broadly, my work explores the intersections of popular music, media, fandom, environmental humanities, and sound studies, with an emphasis on how music and listening practices are transformed across digital, audiovisual, and networked environments.

A significant strand of my research focuses on contemporary popular music and fandom, particularly the music and cultural impact of Taylor Swift. I am co-editor (with Christa Anne Bentley and Paula Clare Harper) of Taylor Swift: The Star, The Songs, The Fans (Routledge, 2025), an interdisciplinary collection examining Swift's star persona, musical texts, and fan cultures. My scholarship on Swift considers mediation, ecology, and digital culture, including my chapter on "The Mediated Natures of Taylor Swift in folklore and evermore," alongside related work on adaptation, authorship, and transmedia circulation.

I also serve as co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Online Music Cultures, which advances the field of online music studies by examining how digital platforms, networked communities, and evolving media infrastructures shape musical creation, circulation, labor, and listening practices in the twenty-first century. My editorial work further extends to emerging areas in sound studies and media theory through Music and Sonic Environments in Video Games (Routledge, 2024), an interdisciplinary collection that explores how sound, ecology, and environmental design shape player experience, worldbuilding, and the sonic dimensions of interactive media.

Before joining Laurier, I held appointments at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Harvard University, and Wesleyan University, including a postdoctoral fellowship at Memorial University of Newfoundland. I received my PhD and MA in from the University of Toronto in Musicology/Ethnomusicology, a graduate certificate in Digital Humanities from the University of Victoria, and BMus from Queen’s University.

Research

My research sits at the intersection of popular music studies, sound studies, media studies, and environmental humanities, with a particular focus on how sound and music mediate relationships between technology, culture, and the environment. My work also engages game sound, digital media, and listening practices, including research on sonic environments, embodiment, and player experience in interactive media. In my research and teaching I take an interdisciplinary approach, which brings together ethnomusicology, media theory, and science and technology studies to examine how sound operates as a critical medium for understanding contemporary cultural, technological, and environmental change.