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At an intersection of composition, practice research, performance autoethnography, critical medical arts, and health humanities, my research primarily examines the creative possibilities for the development of corporeal acoustemology: a sonic and auditory knowledge of the body, health, and, therefore, illness. Current projects include experimental approaches to Indian rhythmic theories combined with narrative elements of pathography to create a new, transdisciplinary form of composition which I am describing as ‘sonic life writing.’ I am also developing musical projects connecting botany and oncology with sonic arts, and creating two “composed documentaries” for radio which will be aired in late 2023.

As a practice-based doctoral researcher at SOAS University of London, I develop projects which specifically challenge standardised cancer narratives and Karnatak rhythmic theory to consider new ways of sharing illness stories and biomedical information through sound and music. Important research questions in my work include:

⇢ How can we tell a story through rhythm? 

⇢ How can we learn about each other’s bodies through sound? 

⇢ How can we better understand disease through reparative listening?

While life writing is an expanding field, especially in literature and film, its relationship with music is a nascent one within the academy; the possibilities of life writing beyond words are my focus in the composition of music and sonic arts.

My work closely engages with South Asian musics, konnakol, cancer narratives, sonic arts, experimental composition, critical medical arts and humanities, hospital radio, sonic life writing, expanded radio arts, reparative listening, and compositional process.

I am very grateful to the Fund for Women Graduates for their support and to the Royal Musical Association for recently awarding me the Thurston Dart Research Grant.

Affiliations:

  • Musicians’ Union (MU)

  • Royal Musical Association (RMA)

  • Royal Society of Arts - fellowship (RSA)

  • Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM)

  • British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE)

  • Association for Medical Humanities (AMH)

  • Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH)