Jennifer Iverson is a scholar of twentieth-century music, with a special emphasis on electronic music, avant-gardism, sound studies, and disability studies. Iverson’s research explores the interaction between bodies, technologies, and sound, drawing together music analysis, archival research, and cultural history. Her book, Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Musical Avant-Garde, was published in 2019 with Oxford University Press, analyzes the cultural impact of mid-century electronic music produced in and around the WDR studio in Cologne, Germany. In particular, the electronic music studio provided a crucial space to reclaim wartime technology and ideas and put them to artistic use. The electronic studio also engendered a paradigm of invisible collaboration, where composers, technicians, scientists, and performers worked in a laboratory-like environment to develop a shared framework of ideas that applied to both electronic and acoustic musical compositions. Related articles appear in the journals Tempo, Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, Music Analysis, twentieth-century music, and Music Theory Spectrum.
In the 2015-16 academic year, Iverson was an External Faculty Fellow in residence at the Stanford Humanities Center. She currently serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago and on the Council of the American Musicological Society. She previously led the Disability and Music Interest Group and served on the Accessibility Committee and on the editorial board of Music Theory Spectrum within the Society for Music Theory. Iverson taught at the University of Iowa from 2009 – 2015.