Madison Archer-Morrison is a PhD student and graduate teaching associate in musicology with focuses on ludomusicology and ethnomusicology. They are also 2025–2026 Treasurer of the Japanese Grad Student Organization. Their research interests include autoethnography, social music vernacular, music in animation and video games, collaborative composition in media music, and decolonizing music research and education. They are currently focused on ethnographies of media music composers in Japan and the United States, and how media music intertextuality fosters engagement in performing, composing and music education. 

Madison has a passion for reforming and diversifying music education, and has applied it to varied contexts including several years assistant teaching at Arizona State and Ohio State, and over a decade of studio and classroom piano instruction at the Community School of the Arts (Wheaton, Illinois) and Music Maker Workshops (Phoenix, Arizona). They served on the music student committee for Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity and Accountability (IDEA) at Arizona State University, and is associated with the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, the American Musicological Society, and Society for Ethnomusicology. They have presented original research at conferences associated with the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Arizona State University, The Midwest Graduate Music Consortium, and the Keep It Simple/Keep It Fun Conference. Additionally, they had a book review published last year in the Society of American Music’s Bulletin, and their master's thesis is available on ProQuest.  

Over the course of their career, Madison has worked with numerous scholars including Professors Arved Ashby, Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Christi J. Wells, Nilanjana Bhattacharjya, Sabine Feisst, David Fossum and Ted Solis, as well as having studied piano with Professors Karin Edwards and Ted Reuter. 

Selected Publications and Presentations

• “‘It’s Dangerous to Go Alone, Play This!’ How Video Game Music Motivates and Inspires Musicianship” presented the Shared Humanities conference, Ohio State University, 2025
• Book review in the Society of American Music Bulletin of Punks in Peoria: Making A Scene in the American Heartland by Jonathon Wright and Dawson Barrett. 2024
• “The People Behind the Music: How Collaboration in 21st Century Film Scores Creates Musical Spaces for Marginalized Communities” presented virtually at the Midwest Graduate Music Consortium, April 2022.