Thomas Hodgson

Ethnomusicologist, UCLA

I study how musicians respond creatively when they come up against algorithms, platforms, and AI. I am Associate Professor at the Herb Alpert School of Music, UCLA.

My first book follows the poetry and music that circulate between Azad Kashmir and Bradford, a city in northern England where many Mirpuri families settled, and where I grew up. It’s called Journeys of Love: Kashmiris, Music, and the Poetics of Migration, and it was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2025.

I’m working on a second book, about musical creativity in what I am describing as the ‘shadow of AI’. Its working title is Making It / Breaking It.

With Rujing Stacy Huang I co-founded the journal Music and Data (UC Press), whose first special issue is on AI Music Studies, and I lead Unruly Intelligences in Music AI, a DataX-funded project at UCLA.

Between 2014 and 2018 I took time out from academia to co-found Tigmus, a music technology company that used streaming and social media data to help artists work out where and when to play. A kind of automated booking agency.

I play trumpet and various other instruments in the band Stornoway, which means the industry I study is also one I work in. In March we played the Royal Albert Hall. With the composer Edward Nesbit I’m creating ten songs for voice and classical guitar in response to the Los Angeles fires.

I live in Los Angeles with my wife, Andreea, and our cat, Pedro, and I go surfing whenever the waves allow.

October 2026