HELEN ANAHITA WILSON

Dr Helen Anahita Wilson FRSA is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow (2026-2029) at King's College London, where she is developing a new theoretical framework of corporeal acoustemology: embodied, auditory knowledge of the body as sonic field. Her practice-based research explores how music, sound, and modes of listening can transform understandings of the human body, health, and illness. In June 2024, her research was cited as an example of best practice in the communication of health-related information in the arts at the BBMRI-ERIC/International Agency for Cancer Research/World Health Organisation Symposium in Lyon, France.

An award-winning composer, sound artist, pianist, and free improviser, Wilson works at the intersection of health humanities, sound studies, performance, and composition. Her work is characterised by innovative approaches to "composing with aliveness" - creating music and sonic arts that engage directly with living bodies, physiological processes, and biomedical information through her distinctive methodology of artistic sonation. This approach creatively transducts experiential and biological information into non-lexical musical compositions, establishing new possibilities for how we understand and relate to our bodies and to living processes.

Wilson's compositional practice brings together research in South Asian musics, sonic life writing, and developments in biophilic music making. She works with creative agencies, architects, curators, botanists, and healthcare providers to integrate biophilic music and sound design in international contexts including hospitals, cultural institutions, and public spaces. She is the inaugural composer-in-residence at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London and is currently creating music and sound design for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 Sightsavers garden in partnership with Barker Langham, the Belonging Forum, and Ostara Garden Design.

Wilson has been commissioned by organisations including the United Nations, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Brighton Dome & Festival, Brighton Pavilion and Museums, Cancer Research UK, Sightsavers, and Maggie's cancer centres. An alumna of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, University of Sussex, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and SOAS University of London, her work has been featured by CNN, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, Sky Arts, and The Sunday Times, which described her music as "beautiful, otherworldly... captivatingly unconventional."

Her critically-acclaimed duo with tabla player Shahbaz Hussain has released multiple albums, with their 2019 release DIWAN featured in numerous top 50 jazz albums of the year. She has also released works via Platoon for Plant Vox: the world's first biophilic, adaptogenic music project, featured on Apple Music Wellbeing and Apple Music Fitness.

Wilson has performed at venues including London's Southbank Centre and St Paul's Cathedral (as musician-in-residence), and has toured extensively throughout Europe and India. She has extensive teaching experience in higher education and has been a guest lecturer at the Royal College of Music, University of Oxford, Royal Northern College of Music, University of the Arts London, Durham University, and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. She also presents Stereophonica, a global classical and art music show on Repeater Radio.

Winner of the 2023 Oram Award for innovation in sound, music, and related technologies, Wilson has been supported by the Wellcome Trust, PRS Foundation, Arts Council England, the Fund for Women Graduates, Help Musicians UK, Sound and Music UK, and the Royal Musical Association. She is a Women Make Music artist with PRS Foundation and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

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Helen gratefully acknowledges support from PRS Foundation:

Also supported by: