Alison Maggart is a historical musicologist, whose research focuses on 20th- and 21st-century music, culture, and identity in the U.S. — in particular, the intersections between music/sound, science, and literature in ultramodern, serial, New Age, and experimental aesthetics. Inspired by feminism, posthumanism, science and technology studies, and environmental studies, her scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in musicology, music theory, sound studies, and interdisciplinary journals and collected editions, including “The Journal of the American Musicological Society,” “The Journal of Musicology, Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture,” “Contemporary Music Review,” “Perspectives of New Music,” “Current Musicology,” and “Poetry, Music, and Sound Art / Lyrik, Musik, und Klangkunst.”

After graduating from Middlebury College with a specialization in composition, she worked as an orchestrator/transcriber for Bollywood composer A.R. Rahman and taught western music history and theory courses in India. In 2017, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, where she was named the Outstanding Doctoral Student of the Thornton School of Music. Her dissertation, “Referential Play in ‘Serious’ Music,” which theorizes the role that borrowing and quotation play in Milton Babbitt’s aesthetics and construction of American Jewish identity, was awarded the Musicology Department and Pi Kappa Lambda Awards. Her paper, “‘Emil Schmog’ or Till Eulenspiegel? A Newly Discovered Cadenza by Richard Strauss,” won the 2016 Ingolf Dahl Award in Musicology.

From 2018–25, Maggart was an Assistant Professor of Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin, where she developed and taught numerous graduate-level courses on 20th-century topics. In 2022, she was honored to win the Butler School of Music’s Teaching Excellence Award. She currently enjoys serving on award committees for the American Musicological Society and Society for American Music.
An active public musicologist, Maggart has conducted research and processed archival materials for National Public Radio, the Piatigorsky Archives, the Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera, and the LA Phil. She gives pre-concert lectures and has been an invited expert on panels for the Houston Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and The Music Guild. As a volunteer with the LA Phil Speakers Bureau, she also regularly delivers presentations on the history of the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Maggart freelances as a music supervisor, cultural consultant, and researcher for film and TV, contributing to shows and podcasts that have aired on HBO, Netflix, Discovery, and YouTube Originals. Most recently, she was a music supervisor for “No Clean Hammer,” a short film and official selection for the LA International Film and Sarajevo Film Festivals.