Xena White - The Forest of Dean: Lore of Stone

The Forest of Dean: Lore of Water and Stone, Lore of Stone is an immersive audio journey through the ancient stone sites of the Forest of Dean. Blending folksong, interview and narration we wander through Poor’s Allotment to hear the tale of Jack O’Kent and the devil, follow the Devil’s quoit hurled toward the banks of the Severn, and visit the places where he broods over his defeat – the Devil’s Pulpit at Tintern and the Devil’s Chapel at Bream. From Staunton, the “stony settlement,” we trace the landscape’s mythology: the Longstone that bleeds, the Buckstone where druids once initiated, and the underground mines where many a Forester met their fate.

Xena is a multispecies audio-visual anthropologist born in the Forest of Dean whose work delves into entangled ecologies—the relationships weaving together humans, non-humans, cultures, and environments. She believes in the radical potential for ethnographic media to capture the emotional and sensory dimensions of multispecies connections, revealing their significance in the mundane and everyday. Her approach underscores the urgent need to share alternative narratives of coexistence, challenging the anthropocentric tales that threaten the planet’s climate.

Sara Rohr - Katajjaq Throat Singing

This podcast focusses on the Katajjaq throat singing tradition practiced by Inuit communities in Canada: Sara Valentina Rohr is an ethnomusicologist and historian based in Switzerland. She holds a master’s degree in World Arts and Music and history. Now, she is a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology of Music at the University of Bern, funded by a scholarship from the Swiss National Foundation. In her PhD project, she engages with the Archives Sonores Inuit, an Inuit song archive recorded in 1938 and 1939 by Swiss ethnographer Jean Gabus, which is now part of the permanent collection of the Musée d’Ethnographie de Neuchâtel. Furthermore, she has been newly elected to the board of the Swiss Society for Ethnomusicology. In her free time, she likes to yodel and play the piano.

Lucas Wink - On the Streets with Bombos Ensembles: Listening to a Traditional Percussive Practice in Northern Portugal

Lucas Wink is a drummer and ethnomusicologist based in Portugal. He holds a Bachelor degree in Music and a Masters degree in Music (Musicology). Currently he is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at the University of Aveiro, where he conducts a research on Bombos funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) of Portugal. He is a researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Center for Studies in Music and Dance (INET-md) working in the research project "EcoMusic – Sustainable Practices: a study of the post-folklorism in Portugal in the 21st century". He also regularly plays the drums for Orquestra Bamba Social, a Luso-Brazilian ensemble mixing samba, jazz, rock and hip-hop based in Porto.

Romy Martinez - Songs by the Riverbanks

BFE Podcast: Songs by the Riverbanks - Romy Martinez

Romy Martinez is a multilingual singer, teacher and researcher with a musical career and academic background spread between Paraguay (country of birth), Brazil and Argentina. She has released interdisciplinary and decolonial research about a common bordering musicality. This work is connected to award winning albums in collaboration with the Purahéi Trio of which she is the founder. Romy holds a degree in Music Education from UDESC and a master’s degree in communication and culture, with emphasis on Latin American Studies from PROLAM/USP, both obtained in Brazil. She also specialised in Argentinian music performance (tango and folklore) at the Manuel de Falla Conservatory in Buenos Aires and since 2018, she has been a doctoral researcher in the Music Department at Royal Holloway University of London.

José Kress - The Construction of Thai National Identity and How this Process is Reflected in Thailand’s Music

José Kress is a sociologist and musicologist from Switzerland. After having completed his a Bachelor degree in Sociology in Valencia, Spain, and a Masters degree in Sociology at the University of Bern, he is now completing a second Masters in World Arts and Music at the University of Bern, with a special focus on Cultural Anthropology of Music.

Currently he is employed as a student tutor in the Department of Musicology in Bern and in his leisure time, he produces a German language podcast series called "Du bist, was du hörst“ (you are what you hear). In each episode, he examines a particular music style or instrument, ranging from traditional music or pop to underground beats through a musicological and sociological lens.

Du bist, was du hörst

Patrick Straub - The Recontextualization of the Anglo-Irish Ballad "The Unfortunate Rake"

Patrick Staub is a Swiss ethnomusicologist and musician. He is a multi-instrumentalist with a focus on various forms of bagpipes, for example, the Spanish Gaita Gallega or the German Schäferpfeife. Patrick studied musicology, modern history, and Scandinavian culture at the University of Zurich and is currently doing his Masters in World Arts and Music at the University of Bern. His studies focus on Irish and Scandinavian music, as well as Eastern Asian culture. In his free time, he likes to build instruments and to train at the Taiko Zürich school for Japanese drums.

Daniel Smither - Dangerous Singing: An Interview with "Cheb," Nabil Elamouri

Daniel Smither is an American ethnomusicology student at SOAS focusing on Balinese gamelan music, in particular the music for the shadow play, gamelan gendér wayang. He obtained a B.A. in Music from Virginia Commonwealth University and received a Darmasiswa scholarship where he spent a year studying Balinese music at the Institut Seni Indonesia in Denpasar, Bali. He has studied and played various types of gamelan music in America, Indonesia and the UK, in groups such as Gamelan Raga Kusuma in Virginia, the Narwastu Art Group in Bali and Gamelan Lila Cita in London. He recently moderated a conference on Korean music in Indonesia for Institut Kesenian Jakarta entitled “Korean Music in Indonesia Present and Development: Urbanism Relocated and Intermediate Encounter.”

Fulvia Torricelli is trained in Social and Environmental Sciences and is currently enrolled as a Masters student in Ethnomusicology in the joint degree between the University of Geneva, the University of Neuchâtel and the Geneva University of Music (HEM), Switzerland. She is a co-founder of the Collectif Migrations Sonores in Geneva with whom she has launched a number of projects related to music, memory and identity in partnership with local associations and institutions. One of the main projects created by this collective is TOPOPHONIK, in partnership with the Geneva Museum of Ethnography and their sound archive collection (AIMP - International Archive of Popular Music) - https://migrassound.ch. This is a Podcast and sound exhibition project that aims at linking communities in Geneva with the archive, thereby creating bridges between music and identities to highlight the city's polyphony of sound and communities. The latest project Fulvia realised as part of the exhibition is called NO MEMORIALS, a sonic exhibition about the 50 years of Chilean exile in Geneva https://www.instagram.com/nomemorials.