Jon Mikkel Broch Ålvik

About Jon Mikkel Broch Ålvik

Mikkel Broch Ålvik holds MA and PhD degrees in musicology from the University of Oslo. He specialises in critical musicology and popular music studies, and his teaching and research are characterised by an interdisciplinary approach that links musicology with gender, media, and identity studies.

Ålvik’s chief musicological interests are the broad field of popular music, identity politics, authenticity, theatricality, the music industry, critical historiography, and mediation. He researches into questions of musical taste, genre, language, gender and sexuality and the relationship/s between music and technology, with the voice as a central topic of interest.

He also researches into questions of Nordic music and identity, and he is an associated member of the Nordic Sounds critical research group at the University of Oslo.

In addition to his scholarly background, Ålvik also has several years’ experience as a musician in the fields of jazz, rock, and classical music.

In autumn 2024, Ålvik is the principal lecturer in Örebro University’s BA program, Musik, kultur och medier (Music, Culture, and the Media). He teaches in the programme’s introductory courses, Musicology: An Introduction 1 and Musicology: An Introduction 2, in Year 1, and Critical Theory and Music Journalism and Cultural Studies in Year 3. He also teaches recording history, cultural theory, and critical and popular music analysis in the MA programme in musicology. Moreover, he teaches research methodology and theory of identity, authenticity and marketing for musicians in the performance programme, and analysis of recorded music, field research method, and film music, semiotics and culture in the music production programme.

Selected Publications

Broch Ålvik, Jon Mikkel. 2021. "The Pleasure(s) of the Pop Text: Subversion and Theatricality in Cloroform and Tove Lo." In Popular Musicology and Identity: Essays in Honour of Stan Hawkins, ed. Kai Arne Hansen, Eirik Askerøi, and Freya Jarman, pp. 82-96. London: Routledge.

Broch Ålvik, Jon Mikkel. 2020. "Kuuk, Skrap, and the Resistance Vernacular." Nordlit, no. 46 (November), pp. 303-317. https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5490

Hawkins, Stan, and Broch Ålvik, Jon Mikkel. 2019. "A-ha's 'Take on Me': Melody, Vocal Compulsion, and Rotoscoping." In The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches, ed. Ciro Scotto, Kenneth Smith, and John Brackett, pp. 77-94. London: Routledge.