Sara Selleri (SOAS, University of London)

My research explores dynamics of inclusion, representation and discrimination in society at large and within higher education music institutions and curricula in Puerto Rico. I look at how music transmission practices and academic institutions can be a product of the socio-cultural background they operate in, and how historically constructed and culturally inherited factors such as internalized colonization, gender discrimination etc. play an important part in determining “which music” or “whose music” is taught and recognized a higher status in academia and society. I’m interested in uncovering where there are correspondences or differentiations in such interrelationships, questioning the repercussions one has on the other in (re)constructing and perpetrating present discriminations of historically excluded groups, both in society and in music.

Gabrielle Messeder (City, University of London)

I'm researching contemporary practices of Brazilian music and dance in Lebanon. Focussing primarily on the genres of samba, bossa nova and música popular brasileira (MPB), I aim to trace their development from the bossa-influenced sound of recordings by Fairouz and Ziad Rahbani in the 1970s to the bands and blocos that perform in Lebanon today. I'll explore the unique, ambivalent and sometimes contested space that the performance of Brazilian music by both Brazilian and non-Brazilian performers occupies in the cosmopolitan Lebanese musical milieu, and discuss how issues of cultural conservatism, exoticism and stereotyping shape the production, performance and reception of Brazilian music and dance in Lebanon today.

Georgette Nummelin (SOAS, University of London)

My project explores how contemporary music can be used to support the maintenance and revitalisation of Ainu language and identity. My fieldwork will take me to Japan to engage with professional and amateur performers and composers, and with the diverse audiences that engage with the music. Additionally, I will be engaging with Ainu language learners of both Ainu and non-Ainu heritage. The aim of my research is to draw on these participants’ experience of learning, creating and performing contemporary Ainu identity through music and language, and to document how these practices can affect the revitalisation of cultural traditions and the Ainu language.

Soosan Lolavar (City, University of London)

My research brings together the methodologies of composition and ethnomusicology to explore a new movement in music in Iran in which musicians and composers combine aspects of Iranian classical music with ideas more commonly associated with Western music. My work will present both a written ethnography and portfolio of compositions considering the creative, social and political effects of drawing from these two forms, particularly against the backdrop of a post-revolutionary Iran in which objects of Western culture are often associated with the imperialism and colonialism.