Rate My Professor Leo Murray

Dr Leo Murray is a Senior Lecturer in Sound in the School of Media and Communication at Murdoch University, where he holds positions as Academic Chair of Sound and Associate Dean of Learning and Teaching. He completed his PhD in Arts at Murdoch University in 2014, with a doctoral thesis titled "With my own ears: the ethics of sound in non-fiction film and TV." Earlier, he obtained a Graduate Diploma in Education from the same institution in 1999 and a BA majoring in Criminology while working in radio broadcasting. Before joining Murdoch in 2002, Murray served as a broadcast engineer for BBC Radio in London for a decade, worked as a music studio recording engineer and camera operator, and taught as a primary school teacher. His career bridges professional audio production and academia, informing his teaching in sound design for games, film, television, sound studies, and popular music culture.

Murray's research centers on the theory and practice of sound design in film and television, interactive media, radio, popular music, and sound studies, with a focus on acoustic ecology, media forensics, and semiotic approaches including Peircean semiotics applied to sound. Key publications include his book Sound Design Theory and Practice: Working with Sound (Routledge, 2019), which explores artistic decisions in soundtracks for cinema, television, and games; "Authenticity and realism in documentary sound" (2010); Badvertising: Polluting Our Minds and Fuelling Climate Chaos (2023, co-authored with Andrew Simms); "Remixing creativity in learning and learning of creativity: A case study of audio remix practice with undergraduate students" (2017); and "Adapting Peircean semiotics to sound theory and practice" (2015). He contributed sound design to the Anthropoiesis installation at the Venice Biennale (2023), sonifying environmental and planetary data to address climate change. Murray's practice-based research examines how soundtracks are constructed and their effects on audiences, integrating production on short films and documentaries.