I am film and sound studies scholar/practitioner. I hold a BA Philosophy from the University of British Columbia (1998); an MA Film Studies from the MA Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University in Montreal where I wrote my thesis on sound in the films of David Lynch; and a PhD Humanities from the interdisciplinary Humanities programme, housed in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia. My doctoral research explores the intersections between film studies, electroacoustic music and acoustic ecology. My dissertation, entitled The Schizophonic Imagination: Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema, examines films that explore ecological issues through their approaches to sound/image relationships. I have presented my research at conferences in Canada, the US, the UK, Germany, Brazil, Mexico, and Japan. My writing has been published in several anthologies including Music, Sound, and Multimedia (University of Edinburgh Press, 2007) and has most recently appeared in the film journals Cinephile and Music, Sound, and the Moving Image. I am also a regular contributor to the online journals Synoptique and Offscreen where I write on film sound and cover local film and new media festivals.

In my post-doctoral project I am developing a methodology for including film and media soundtracks in the qualitative soundscape research being carried out by the World Soundscape Project. I will apply this methodology to case studies that examine how the sonic environments of specific geographical locales have been represented in the media with a particular focus on urban centers like Vancouver, Montreal, and New York City. As a preliminary research tool I have established MontrealSoundscape.org, a resource guide for those interested in studying the soundscape of Montreal.

Since 2001 I have taught on film sound theory, auteur studies, film aesthetics, interdisciplinary studies and media literacy at Concordia University and LaSalle College in Montreal.

For the past 15 years I have administrated the Soppy Bag Records artist collective, first established in 1994 as the production house for the work of my band We Are Privy in which I played keyboards and wrote compositions. The band dissolved shortly after our only recording was completed, but since then Soppy Bag Records has been the nexus point of my creative practice which has involved music, film/video work, soundscape composition, as well as a host of audio collage projects under the name Gerstyn Hayward. My work has been presented at festivals and conferences internationally, including: New Forms Festival (Vancouver, 2004); The Anti-Matter Film Festival (Victoria, 2009); the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (Mexico City, 2009); and the Videoex International Film Festival (Switzerland, 2010). My latest film premiered in the Scholars' Screening Series at the annual meeting of the Film Studies Association of Canada in Montreal last June, and recently played the Cinesonika Film Festival in Vancouver, BC.