Rate My Professor Rod Davies

Dr Rod Davies is a lecturer in songwriting and convenor of popular music at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance, Faculty of Arts, Monash University. He holds a Bachelor of Science in psychology and physiology from Monash University (1995), a Graduate Diploma in Arts (Research) (2014), and a PhD in Music Performance (2019). Over 25 years, Davies has pursued a professional career as a vocalist across live performance, studio recording, music theatre, publishing, and education. He has worked as a solo artist, commercial entertainer, and backing singer for Australian icons John Farnham, Olivia Newton-John, Tina Arena, and Mark Seymour. His session vocals feature on television programs Hey Hey It's Saturday (1996-2010) and Dancing with the Stars (2004-2015), radio, and albums. In music theatre, he performed in Piano Men (1996), wrote Pop! (1999), and directed Kissing Frogs (2003) and Minefields and Miniskirts (2005). From 2006, he signed a songwriting deal with EMI Music Publishing Germany, recording in northern Europe for six years. He joined Monash staff in 2016.

One of Australia's leading practitioner researchers in recording studio production and songwriting, Davies investigates music industries, intellectual property, performers' rights, cultural policy, and popular music education. His publications include Repetition and Performance in the Recording Studio (Cambridge University Press, 2024), 'Out of sight out of mind: rights for non-featured performers in the Australian recording industry' (Australian Intellectual Property Journal, 2023), 'An autoethnography of performance in the vocal booth' in The Routledge Companion to Music, Autoethnography and Reflexivity (Routledge, 2025), and forthcoming articles 'The unsung: examining how contracts affect session musicians’ remuneration in Australia' (International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2026) and 'De-professionalization in the recording studio: how the movement towards remote DIY home recording has impacted the professional trajectory of Australian session vocalists' (Popular Music and Society, 2026). His work informs cultural policy and government copyright reform inquiries. Davies serves as federal councillor for the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance, advising union, industry, and government.