Mark Thursby's research interests lie across the following areas:

1) analytic philosophy and philosophy of mind: consciousness and naturalistic approaches to the exploration of self and qualia. Heterophenomenology and third-person analysis of first-person ontology. 

2) psychology and evolutionary psychology: cognitive bias, evolutionary approaches to learning, learning theory, intuition and reason, group behaviour, biological analysis of politics and gender. 

3) Critical theory in music: postmodernism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, marxism, social constructionism vs epistemology. 

4) Composition: acousmatic, drum and bass, electonic, synthesis, sampling, harmonic series and just intonation, digital audio and glitch

5) Music theory and improvisation: student understanding of music theory in the digital age. 

Mark Thursby is the Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Popular Music at the University of Northampton. His teaching interests are:

* Music Production - synthesis, sound design, exploration of audio in the digital domain.

* Composition - acoustimatic, electronic and drum and bass.

* Music theory: harmony, jazz, fusion, improvisation

* Acoustics and psychoacoustics: harmony, pitch, just intonation, equally tempered scales, perception of sound 

He teaches on the following modules: 

MUS1124 - Digital Audio Workstation 1

MUS2124 - Digital Audio Workstation 2 

MUS1130 - Composition and Theory 1

MUS1129  - Cultural Theory

MUS2127 - Performance 2

MUS3128 - Performance 3

MUS3126 - Avant Pop