Nicholas Tochka

Nicholas Tochka is Associate Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology) at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne. He earned his PhD in ethnomusicology from Stony Brook University in 2012, following which he held a visiting position as instructor in ethnomusicology at Northern Arizona University. Since 2017, he has been a faculty member at the University of Melbourne, advancing through positions including senior lecturer. Tochka coordinates the Musicology and Ethnomusicology major and teaches courses such as Musics of the World, The Ethnography of Music, and Writing About Music.

His research focuses on popular, traditional, and art musics in Europe and the Americas, emphasizing the politics of music-making since 1945, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, and Cold War studies. Notable publications include the monograph Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania (Oxford University Press, 2017), which traces the development of light music under socialist governance; Rocking in the Free World: Popular Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2023), awarded the 2024 ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound (Best Historical Research in Recorded Rock); and The Musical Lives of Charles Manson: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Invention of the Sixties (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). Other key works feature articles such as 'John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band as "first-person music": notes on the politics of self-expression in rock music since 1970' in Popular Music (2021), 'Pussy Riot, freedom of expression, and popular music studies after the Cold War' in Popular Music (2013), and contributions to Ethnomusicology and the Journal of World Popular Music. Tochka received the ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship and has participated in initiatives like the Research Initiative on Post-Soviet Space. His scholarship impacts understandings of music's role in political and cultural transformations, featured in public podcasts and articles on the University of Melbourne's Pursuit platform discussing music in politics and protest.

Professional Email: nicholas.tochka@unimelb.edu.au