SADIE COUTURE, PHD

Sadie Couture is a historian of digital culture drawing together media theory, science and technology studies, and sound studies to make sense of our contemporary media landscapes. Sadie is a postdoctoral research fellow jointly appointed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and Northwestern University. She has published on sound cultures, talk radio, and podcasting in AModern, Cultural Studies, MAST: The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, Media Fields, Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, and Social Media + Society, and she regularly produces audio media for both scholarly and popular audiences. Sadie holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University.

Sadie has held research residencies and fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution, The Radio Preservation Task Force, McGill University, and her research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture, The Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy, and The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. 

Her dissertation and book project, entitled “Long Time Listener, First Time Caller: A History of Call-In Radio in the United States and Canada, 1945-1975”  focuses on the origins, development, and conventionalization of call-in radio and demonstrates how the format has been a pre-digital prototype for the types of participatory media and user-generated content which are so central to our contemporary media ecosystems.

A young woman with long brown hair, wearing a blue sleeveless top, sitting by a window and smiling at the camera.