Associate Professor
Sound Τechnology, Music Pedagogy & Byzantine Musicology
Tel.: --
FAX: --
Room: 927
Floor: 9th
email: thanospol@music.uoa.gr
Academic Career
Thanos Polymeneas-Liontiris is an Assistant Professor of Music-Making with Interactive Media in the Department of Music Studies at the School of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
He studied double bass and electroacoustic composition at the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands. He pursued postgraduate seminars in sound technology at the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) in Paris. He holds two Master’s degrees: one in Fine Arts (specialisation Art and Technology) and another in Creative Education. Both of his Master's theses were awarded with honorary distinction.
He holds a PhD from the University of Sussex, funded by the British government through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). His doctoral dissertation was recognized by the academic journal Leonardo (MIT Press) as one of the most significant works of 2020 in the field of aesthetics and technology (https://leonardo.info/labs-2020).
From 2011 to 2018, he taught consistently in undergraduate and postgraduate programs at universities in England (Falmouth, Brighton, Sussex). Upon returning to Greece in 2018, he taught in the postgraduate programs of the Departments of Music Studies at the Ionian University and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He served as an Academic Fellow at the Department of Music Studies of NKUA and, from 2020 to 2022, was a research associate at the University of Sussex in the UK. During the 2023–2024 academic year, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Intelligent Instruments Lab at the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavik, where he studied the use of Artificial Intelligence models in combination with musical interfaces and augmented acoustic musical instruments.
Artistic Activity
His artistic work includes, among other things: musical compositions, discography, audiovisual installations, interactive and participatory projects, music theatre, and long-duration performance works. He has created a series of digital storytelling projects that use site-specific and psychoacoustic techniques as tools to immerse participants in augmented sonic reality environments.
He has produced several interactive music theatre works in which the audience can interact with both the performers and the digital systems that run through the pieces, actively shaping the development of the work.
He is involved in the creation of augmented interactive interfaces and musical instruments, whose main feature is feedback (of audio signals or digital data). These have been used in numerous concerts and recordings.
He has composed music for theatre and dance performances. His artistic work has been presented at international events such as the Greek National Opera, Athens State Orchestra, Athens and Epidaurus Festival, Holland Festival, Todays Art Festival, Kalamata International Dance Festival, Modern Body Festival, Megaron – The Athens Concert Hall, Onassis Stegi, Tectonics Festival, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, Spark Festival, and many others.
Research Interests
His doctoral research focused on the development of generative performances —works orchestrated through interactive processes between audience, performers, and digital technology. The research, grounded in posthumanism and cybernetics, proposed a form of self-organization within the performance experience itself. This fundamentally challenges traditional concepts of authorship and spectatorship within the performative context.
His research interests include:
Membership in Organizations
In 2012, he became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) in the UK. He is also a member of The Hellenic Association of Electroacoustic Music Composers, The Union of Greek Composers, The Hellenic Society for Acoustic Ecology. He has also served on academic and organizing committees for international conferences, including EDULEARN2013, FASCINATE2013, ICLI2016, the 7th Conference on Acoustic Ecology, and the 2024 Days of Electroacoustic Music a.o.
Master’sThesesandDoctoralDissertation
Polymeneas-Liontiris T. (2019) "IM-Medea: Posthumanism and remediation in music theatre," PhD Thesis, University of Sussex.
Polymeneas-Liontiris T. (2014) "Soundwalk M: A site-specific and immersive learning experience," MA Thesis, Falmouth University.
Polymeneas T. (2009) "Violencia y Difusión: DarkRoom," MA Thesis, Faculty of Fine Arts, Polytechnic University of Valencia.
Monograph
Polymeneas-Liontiris T. (2020) "AudioWalk M: An auditory and site-specific educational experience," Lambert Academic Publishing. ISBN: 978-613-9-83797-7
Publications (selection)
Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., Demeglio M.E., (2025, forthcoming). Medea, Landscape and Cyborg: a Feminist Posthumanism Reading of Heiner Müller's Despoiled Shore MedeaMaterial Landscape with Argonauts. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media (IJPADM).
Kousteridou, D., Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., (2025, forthcoming). Visual Sonorities and Aural Explorations: Anestis Logothetis’ Meditation (1961) resonating in Dimitra Kousteridou’s creative practice. In Proceedings of the International Centenary Symposium. Eds. Antoniadis, P., Georgaki A.
Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., (2025). Mapping the Influence: Iannis Xenakis’s GENDYN algorithms as a means for creative explorations in live improvised feedback music. In Meta-Xenakis: New Perspectives on Iannis Xenakis’s Life, Work, Legacies. Eds. Kanach Sh., Nelson P., Open Book Publishers, Cambridge, UK.
Rovolis F., Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., (2025). Queer Soundscapes: deconstructing gender identifiers in vocal and bodily sounds through a technologically-aided music composition. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Music Computing 2024, Seoul 2024.
Rovolis F., Andreopoulou, A., Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., (2025). Cyborgutt: Exploring the body’s fluid boundaries through a biosensor composition. In Proceedings of the Sound and Music Computing Conference 2024, Porto 2024.
Gavroglou K., Stratís K., Polymeneas-Liontiris A., (2023). Education in the Field of the Performing Arts: A Proposal for a Progressive Policy. Co-publication by ENA: Institute for Alternative Policies and ThinkBee: Cooperative for Research, Creation and Promotion of Progressive Policies.
Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., Demeglio M.E., (2022). Cybernetic Feedback Processes in Music-Theatre Practice: The Im-Medea Cycle. ECHO: a journal of music, thought and technology 3. doi: 10.47041/XVRO7587
Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., Demeglio M.E., (2022). The Im-Medea cycle: Cybernetics and Posthumanism in Music Theatre. Leonardo Music Journal, MIT Press.
Polymeneas-Liontiris, A., (2018). Acoustic Walk M: An educational journey through space-time. In Mniestres, A., Sarris, D., Paparrigopoulos, K. (Eds.) (forthcoming) Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Acoustic Ecology, Kalamata 2018: "Sound, Experience, Education." Kalamata-Corfu: Hellenic Society for Acoustic Ecology.
Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., Magnusson, T., Kiefer, C., Eldridge, A. (2018). Brain Dead Ensemble: an Acoustically Networked Feedback Assemblage of Four. In: International Conference On Live Interfaces, 14–16 June, Porto, Portugal.
Polymeneas-Liontiris, T. (2018). Low Frequency Feedback Drones: A non-invasive augmentation of the double bass. In: New Interfaces for Musical Expression, 3-6 June, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA.
Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., Loveday-Edwards, A. (2013). The Disklavier in Networked Music Performances. In: ATINER (Athens Institute for Education and Research), 4th Annual International Conference on Visual and Performing Arts, 3–6 June 2013, Athens, Greece.
Polymeneas-Liontiris, T., Loveday-Edwards, A. (2012). The Disklavier: From Educational Tool to Digital Interspatial Performance Explorations. In: ICERI2012, 5th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation, 19–21 November 2012, Madrid, Spain.
