Áine Mangaoang is a musicologist, educator, and musician.
Much of her work is concerned with how music is used, experienced and mediated in everyday life, especially by those on the margins of society.
-
Áine Mangaoang is Professor in Popular Music at the University of Oslo, working at the intersections of music, cultural citizenship, and identity. She previously held academic posts at Listaháskóli Islands (Iceland University of the Arts), the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool, and Dublin City University.
Áine's first monograph Dangerous Mediations: Pop Music in a Philippine Prison Video (2019) asks broader questions about the use of music as a form of discipline in the digital era, and received the 2021 International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US Branch (IASPM-US) Woody Guthrie Prize for most outstanding book on popular music. Her second book, Made in Ireland: Studies in Popular Music(2021, with John O'Flynn & Lonán Ó Briain) is the first comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Irish popular music. Her recent anthology Sound and Detention: Towards critical listening, sonic citizenship, and social justice(2026, with Lucy Cathcart Frödén and Kate Herrity) features over 40 contributors who collectively tune in to how sound — and its absence — can function as a source of power that enables isolation, control and harm, as well as connection, healing and resistance. Other recently published and forthcoming work includes writing on interpreting music and multimodality for Deaf audiences through Irish Sign Language, and a monograph on the music of Sinéad O'Connor (under contract with Cambridge University Press).
She is currently Principal Investigator for the four-year project Prisons of Note: Mapping music and nuances in penal exceptionalism from the peripheryfunded by the Norwegian Research Council's Young Researcher Talent Award. Drawing from fieldwork in Norway and the Republic of Ireland, the project examines the role of music and sound in prison.
Boards & Memberships
Advisory Board Member | Sounding the Feminists & Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland
Editorial Board Member | Arts Journal, Switzerland
Co-Founder | Nordic Sounds: Critical Nordic Music Network Norway
Co-Founding Member | GlasDrum | Not-For-Profit Multidisciplinary Arts Organisation, Ireland
Executive Board Member | International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) UK & Ireland | Membership Secretary & Honorary Treasurer (2011-'16)
National Committee Member | Society for Music Education in Ireland (2013-'18)
Web Manager | The Council of Heads of Music in Higher Education, Ireland
Read More