Dr. Michelle Lessard

Dr. Michelle Lessard is a music theorist, ludomusicologist, and educator with over 5 years of experience teaching at a wide range of institutions of higher learning. She joined the music faculty of Jacksonville State University in 2025 as an Assistant Professor of Music Theory where she teaches music theory, aural skills, counterpoint, upper-level writing intensive courses, and a course of her own creation on video game music. 

Her research is primarily concerned with music and sound in video games, with a special interest in immersion, embodied experience, and player subjectivity in contemporary games. She has presented her research at the Music and the Moving Image Conference, the International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition, Press Start: A Video Game Music Symposium and has been published in the Library of Congress and in the Journal for Sound and Music in Games. Her most recent work, forthcoming in the The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Video Game Music, discusses Danny Baranowsky and Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Dr. Lessard earned a PhD at the University of Toronto where she wrote a dissertation titled “Avatar/Player Virtual Subjectivity: The Role of the Soundtrack in Open-World Video Games.” She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music from the Sunderman Conservatory of Music at Gettysburg College and a Master of Music in Music Theory from the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin.

When she is not studying or teaching, Michelle loves to read fiction and spend time outdoors with her partner and their “oh-my-God-she’s-so-adorable” dog, Luna.