The Sound Studies Center (SSC) is a research institute where discourses around sound are studied and developed; where sound art is made, facilitated, and reflected upon; where educational programs about sound are created and administered; and where organizations can seek advice regarding sound policies. 

The SSC provides a platform for building and maintaining cooperative feedback loops between academic and applied knowledge through diverse initiatives that support artistic production, lifelong learning, and policymaking.

The SSC is part of Leiden University’s Academic of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA).

The SSC’s main objectives are to stimulate academic work on sound and sound art, to offer the opportunity for sound artists to create new work and to do research, to provide advice to non-academic organizations on sound design, and to develop educational programs on sound and sound art. In order to achieve this, the SSC works with scholars and artists from diverse backgrounds and forms of expertise.

Long before his appointment as Professor of Auditory Culture and Music Philosophy at Leiden University in 2016, Marcel Cobussen has helped to nurture the then nascent and now thriving discipline of sound studies. In addition to academic pursuits developing new approaches to sonic ecologies and teaching sound studies and sound art, he has also actively supported new artistic practices with sound and consulted with governmental organizations on the development of sound policies.

Reflecting the “sonic turn” of the early 21st century, these activities emerged from the growing realization about the impact of sound at many levels of society. Both scholars and citizens became increasingly aware of the influence that sound has on mood, experience, behavior, and (re)actions. As academic publication on sound gained prominence and became the subject of active debate, sound art became an integral part of many festivals, and noise pollution came to be recognized as a serious global concern.

Cobussen has slowly built the institutional momentum and interdisciplinary networks to bring these diverse activities together in a Sound Studies Center (SSC). As both a physical space located in Leiden and a social community, the SSC serves simultaneously as a refuge and an instigator for researchers and artists invested in sound and its relation to ecology and society.

The SSC was launched in 2023 with the appointment of Linnea Semmerling and Kevin Toksöz Fairbairn, and an inaugural meeting with affiliated scholars, artists, and other researchers. Funded by BTC-ENUTC, the Sounding Urban Places project (2024–25) also contributed to the development of the website, creating an interface for exchange between the participating European research teams. Since then, the SSC has been continually under development as a research institute, a network, a platform, an educator, and an advisor.