Dr. Thomas Irvine is a global historian of music from 1500 CE to the present. After studying viola at conservatoire (at the Shepherd School of Rice University and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music) he moved to Germany and played professionally, mostly in Early Music ensembles but also in symphony orchestras. He also taught for a year at the Frankfurt International School and worked as a manager for a large Early Music organization.

In 1999 he found his way to musicology and back to the US, studying performance practice and musicology at Cornell University, where he took his PhD in 2005. His current research focuses on global music history, historical sound studies and the use of machine learning techniques in jazz. He is the author of Listening to China: Sound and the Sino-Western Encounter 1770-1839 (University of Chicago Press, 2020) and the co-editor, with Neil Gregor, of Dreams of Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor (Berghahn, 2019).