Dr Dan Golding

Biography

I am a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Chair of the Department of Media and Communications at Swinburne University of Technology. As a researcher and teacher, I am interested in the intersection of technology and media, including history, cinema, videogames, and digital music. Here at Swinburne I teach third year Cinema and Screen units, and previously spent many years running our first year Introduction to Media Studies unit. I am the author of 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. I have also won awards for both my journalism and my composing, and 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, is currently out on Decca Records and on vinyl through iam8bit.

I have a special interest in film music, and I am the host of ABC Classic's weekly 'Screen Sounds' program, which is broadcast nationally on FM and digital radio. I also co-host a podcast about film music called Art of the Score, and regularly do pre-concert talks for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. I make popular video essays about film and music - my YouTube channel has achieved more than one million views, and in 2018, I co-presented the 15-part miniseries What Is Music for ABC iView and Triple J with Linda Marigliano.

As a journalist, I have had over 200 publications in a wide range of venues, from ABC Arts, The Guardian, The Australian, Meanjin, The Walkley Magazine, Screen Education, Buzzfeed, Kill Your Darlings, to Metro Magazine (where I'm currently a contributing editor). My journalism for Crikey saw me awarded the 'Best Games Journalist' award at the 11th Annual Australian IT Journalism 'Lizzie' awards. I also wrote, presented, and edited the audio documentary series 'A Short History of Video Games' which was broadcast on ABC Radio National. I was also the Director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival, Australia's longest-running independent games festival, from 2014-2017, and I'm now on the organisation's board.

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 recently published academic work on VR ('Far From Paradise', Convergence, 2017), cinema (on 'La La Land', Senses of Cinema, 2017), and videogames ('Writing Games', TEXT, 2018). As a researcher, I have worked with Village Roadshow, ACMI, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

You can find further information and links to my broadcasting, video essays, podcasts, soundtracks, and books, at dangolding.com