Hayden Ryan

Hayden Ryan is a Yuin First Nations sound scholar and artist from the south east coast of New South Wales, currently residing in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). His work centres Indigenous sonic an spatial practice, a concept that realises the inextricability of land, body sound and culture within Indigenous knowledge systems. The role of sound and space within cultural practice has been disrupted by the colonial project, Hayden’s work aims at utilising sound technologies in order to recentre these epistemological structures.

Hayden recently completed a Master of Music in Music Technology at New York University, where he wrote his thesis on Indigenising Sound Recording - focusing on colonial histories of audio technologies and their extractive functions that have remained unchallenged. During this time, he published and presented a paper at the 2024 Audio Engineering Society conference in Madrid, Spain, addressing the inherently colonial foundations that audio technology disciplines settle on. 

Hayden is currently a Vice-Chancellor’s Indigenous Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow at RMIT University, where he is working on a PhD in Design in the SIAL Sound Studios. Hayden’s research foregrounds the importance of cultural space, in attempt to formulate a robust framework that allows sonic and spatial aspects of culture to play a prominent role in land and heritage protection.

In August 2025, Hayden will be a resident artist at the Helsinki International Artist Programme (HIAP) in Finland.