William Forde Thompson

William Forde "Bill" Thompson is an academic who has worked in Canada and Australia. He is currently a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, where he was chair of the Psychology Department between 2009 and 2013. His research focuses on music, emotion, expertise, and performance.[1]

From 2007 to 2009, he was president of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition. He is aAssociate editor at Music Perception, former editor of Empirical Musicology Review (2008–2010), and chief investigator of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders.

Born in Middletown, Connecticut, USA, Thompson holds a BSc in psychology from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and an MA and PhD in psychology from Queen's University (Kingston, Canada). He is the author of Music, Thought, and Feeling: Understanding the Psychology of Music Oxford University Press [USA], 2009 (1st edition), 2014 (2nd edition), and editor for the Encyclopedia of Music in the Social and Behavioral Sciences published by Sage Press in 2014.

In addition to his academic work, Thompson has composed and performed music for a number of films and plays, including several by his sister, Canadian playwright Judith Thompson.