Associate Professor Dan Golding

Biography

I am Associate Professor and Acting Chair of the Department of Media and Communications at Swinburne University of Technology, as well as an award-winning composer, broadcaster, and writer.

As a researcher and teacher, I am interested in the interaction between media technology and history, with a particular emphasis on cinema, videogames, and soundtracks. Here at Swinburne I largely teach final year Cinema and Screen units, and previously spent many years running our first year Introduction to Media Studies unit. A little bit about me:

• I am a widely-published author and researcher. My latest book is Star Wars After Lucas (2019), a monograph published by the University of Minnesota Press, which traces the development of the Star Wars franchise under Disney. In 2016 I co-authored my first book, Game Changers: From Minecraft to Misogyny, the Fight for the Future of Videogames for Affirm Press with Leena van Deventer. I have published academic work on special effects (digital faces and deepfakes), VR, videogames, and blockbuster cinema in journals like Convergence, TEXT, Senses of Cinema, and Continuum. My full publication list can be found below.
• I have won both ARC and Industry funding. Currently I am a Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery project, 'Artistic Practice in Australian Videogame Development' (2023-2025), and have been engaged by the Australian Council for the Arts to undertake 'The Australian Music in Games Benchmark 2023' in collaboration with QUT. Previously, I was a Chief Investigator on the 'Crushed But Okay' project with the Alannah & Madeline Foundation which recieved funding from the Office of the eSafety Commissioner and won the Vice-Chancellor’s Research Excellence Award (Team) in 2022.
• I am an experienced supervisor of higher-degree research. I have supervised 6 PhDs to completion, including the 2023 Iain Wallace Medal winner for the Most Outstanding Doctorate Student at Swinburne, Dr. Stephanie Harkin.
• I have a record of world-class creative practice. As a composer, I created the soundtrack for the BAFTA, DICE, and GDCA-winning Untitled Goose Game (2019). The soundtrack album, the first ever from a videogame to be nominated for an ARIA award, was published by Decca Records and on vinyl through iam8bit. In 2022, my music for Untitled Goose Game was performed live by Orchestra Victoria in collaboration with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in one of the world’s only live-to-game videogame soundtrack performances. This performance was later highlighted by the Australian Federal Government's National Cultural Policy document. Other composing includes the soundtracks for Push Me Pull You (2016) and the Frog Detective series, for which my score for The Haunted Island (2018) won the APRA-AMCOS Australian Game Developer award for Best Music. I also created Swinburne's next_gen now audio brand which you'll hear in all video advertising, and in 2022, I composed the theme music for the ABC's flagship podcast, ABC News Daily.
• I am a nationally recognised broadcaster. I have hosted ABC Classic's 'Screen Sounds' radio program since 2019, which is broadcast nationally every Sunday. In 2018, I co-presented the 15-part television miniseries What Is Music for ABC iView and Triple J with Linda Marigliano, and in 2015 I wrote and presented A Short History of Videogames for ABC Radio National. I also co-host a podcast about film music called Art of the Score. I make popular video essays about film and music, and my YouTube channel has achieved more than 1.5 million views.
• I am also an experienced presenter. I have hosted concerts, talks, and events for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, including hosting a 2022 Sidney Myer Music Bowl concert to a capacity crowd of 10,000 people in 2022. 
• I am a prolific writer with more than a decade of experience. I have written and published in publications include ABC Arts, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Meanjin, The Walkley Magazine, Buzzfeed, Kill Your Darlings, and Metro Magazine (where I'm currently on the editorial board). My journalism for Crikey saw me awarded the 'Best Games Journalist' award at the 11th Annual Australian IT Journalism 'Lizzie' awards.
• I have led organisations. I was the Director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival, Australia's longest-running independent games festival, from 2014-2017, and was a member of the festival's governing board from 2017-2022. Currently, I am Acting Chair of Swinburne's Media and Communication department (2020-present), and since 2020 I have chaired Swinburne's Creative Arts Non-Traditional Research Output (NTRO) panel. I have sat on external and review committees for ACMI, Creative Victoria, and the VCAA.
  
  

You can find further information and links to my broadcasting, video essays, podcasts, soundtracks, and books, and profiles of me in the media (including by Limelight Magazine and The Saturday Paper) at dangolding.com