Phil Ford, associate professor of music in musicology, has been named a recipient of the prestigious 2025 Trustees Teaching Award. He is one of only a handful of faculty members—tenure-track and non-tenure-track—across the Jacobs School to receive this honor, which celebrates excellence and dedication in teaching. Awardees are selected by a five-member ad hoc committee appointed by the Faculty Issues Committee.
Ford’s dynamic and thought-provoking approach in the classroom has made him a standout educator at IU. His courses explore a wide range of topics, with a particular focus on postwar American culture and music—including jazz, pop, film music, and the avant-garde—as well as sound studies, musical performance, and philosophies of experience. His teaching and research also consider into the intellectual history of counterculture and the intersections of music with magical and contemplative thought.
Ford is the author of Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture (Oxford University Press, 2013), a widely acclaimed study of the aesthetic and philosophical dimensions of hipness in music and culture. His scholarly work has appeared in Representations, Journal of Musicology, Musical Quarterly, and other leading journals. Beyond academia, Ford was the founder and lead writer of the influential blog Dial ‘M’ for Musicology (2006–2018) and is currently cohost of the popular arts and philosophy podcast Weird Studies, produced in collaboration with writer and filmmaker J. F. Martel.
Congratulations Prof. Ford!
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