I explore the intersections between music, technologies, people, and history. Right now, I am especially interested in synthesizers, in how people use and mis-use them, in how electronic sounds circulate, and in how cultural value is produced. I’m writing a book called Synthesizing Ourselves: The Black Box That Changed Music Forever. It uses a mix of close hearing, archival research, and interviews.
My first book is Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Avant-Garde (Oxford, 2019). It analyzes the WDR studio in Cologne, Germany, one of the first studios of the 1950s. I show how technology brought science and music together, expose the crucial roles of invisible collaborators like technicians, and demonstrate that electronic music helped West Germany pivot into a reclaimed nation.
I am a passionate disability activist. At City Elementary, a K–8 school for neurodiverse children, I am Board Chair and facilitate a long-standing social music partnership that brings UChicago undergrads to the school. I co-teach “Disability and Design,” a capstone undergraduate course with Michele Friedner, lead workshops on inclusive pedagogy, and have written about challenging electro-vocal music by Björk, Milton Babbitt, Trevor Wishart, Luciano Berio, Cathy Berberian, and Alvin Lucier.
I frequently teach non-majors, including in my signature course “Hearing Popular Music,” give public and pre-concert lectures, and appear on podcasts and radio broadcasts. I am a writer for Forgotten Futures.
I was educated at the University of Texas at Austin and other public institutions and began my career at the University of Iowa. I have taught at UChicago since 2016. I have won several fellowships including the Berlin Prize, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Franke Humanities Center, and the ACLS.
Selected Work
“About: Jean-Jacques Perrey,” (2025) https://jonuleis.com/sites/jjp/about/
“The Humans in the Machines: Thoughts about the WDR Studio for Electronic Music,” Noies (2025) https://noies.nrw/gedanken-ueber-wdr-studio-fuer-elektronische-musik-the-humans-in-the-machines/
“Unstable Modernism in the Barron Studio,” Modernism/modernity (2021) https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0215
TR-808: Race, Groove, and Drum Machines (2021) https://music.uchicago.edu/news/jennifer-iverson-tr-808-race-groove-and-drum-machines
Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Musical Avant-Garde (2019) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/electronic-inspirations-9780190868208?lang=en&cc=us
The Course Podcast (March 2024): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-course/id1615389282?i=1000648407652