Martin Spinelli is the first formally named Professor of Podcasting in the UK and a leading international expert on podcasting; he is lead editor of the Bloomsbury Podcast Studies book series, and lead author of the ground-breaking Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution, shortlisted for the American Association of Publishers Prose Award in 2020 and now in its 6th printing. He is also a globally-recognised audio production talent: He is the Executive Producer on, and has written and directed for, The Rez, the most listened-to children's podcast drama produced in the UK. The Rez, funded by a series of Arts Council England grants, has cracked the Top 10 charts in the US and UK, and has won and been shortlisted for numerous national and international awards (Audio Production Awards, British Podcast Awards, Lovie Awards, The ARIAS, The Webby Awards, etc.). Most of Martin's projects inside and outside of the university (like The Rez) are guided by a pro-social, positive social change ethos. This includes his Agricultural Voices Syria project, a collaboration with the Business School to address the UN Sustainable Development Goal no. 2, Zero Hunger. AVS trained Syrian ex-pat agronomists living in Turkey to produce podcasts to support displaced and micro farmers in Northwest Syria. The impact of AVS was recognised and celebrated with an Emerald Interdisciplinary Research Award in 2021. Each year he involves his students in his varied productions and produces podcasts with them on courses, like the Borderscapes series that he produces with his MA Media Practice for Development and Social Change students.

Martin began a career in radio as a teenager. In his twenties as a reporter, anchor and producer in Buffalo, New York, he produced national award-winning news features and documentaries for public radio as well as the nationally acclaimed literary series LINEbreak, the first produced audio speech programme to use the internet as a means of distribution to stations. In the mid-1990s he produced cutting-edge pieces heard on innovative stations around the world, as well as on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. Both his benchmark radio art series Radio Radio and LINEbreak are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York while all of his radio work and media research are archived in the Martin Spinelli Collection at the University at Buffalo Libraries.

Martin holds degrees from the University of Sussex and Virginia Tech as well as a PhD from Buffalo. He was the founder of the Academic Radio Program at the City University of New York at Brooklyn College where he produced the AIDS-informational soap opera Welcome to America broadcast on Radio Africa International. His many essays about podcasting, media art, law, politics and history have been published in anthologies as well as scholarly journals such as Postmodern Culture, Convergence and Object.

Martin supervises Creative and Critical Practice PhD students, as well as PhD students in Media Studies and Filmmaking. These are typically creating or researching in some area of podcasting, sound, scriptwriting or media production cultures.