BFE Member Awarded 2019 SEM Helen Robert prize

We are delighted to announce that BFE member and former BFE Chair Prof Laudan Nooshin has been awarded the SEM 2019 Helen Roberts prize, which recognizes the most significant article in ethnomusicology written by members of the Society for Ethnomusicology after the first 10 years of their scholarly career. Laudan has been awarded the prize for her 2018 article “Our Angel of Salvation”: Toward an Understanding of Iranian Cyberspace as an Alternative Sphere of Musical Sociality”, published in Ethnomusicology Vol. 62, No. 3. The prize committee issued the following statement in appreciation of Laudan's timely and important article:

The committee was particularly impressed by the article’s innovative subject and the substantial argumentation build around it, offering both theoretical apparatus and a set of provocative questions that are relevant to all ethnomusicologists as we confront online listening and performance practices. While seeking to understand ways in which new media technologies open spaces for new musical socialities and accordingly shift conceptual boundaries between public and private, the engagement with critical issues in Iran and the Middle East confronts more specifically what happens when the internet becomes the primary arena of musical engagement, at times replacing its physical public presence entirely. The article is politically astute and ethnographically rich; its delivery elegant, well-paced and judiciously organised.

Congratulations Laudan!