I am Professor of Anthropology and Music in the Department of Anthropology, University College London. From 2010-21 I was Professor of Music and Anthropology in the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, and from 2006-10 I was Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at the University of Cambridge. Earlier I had a professional life as a musician in experimental rock, jazz and improvised music. I have held visiting professorships as follows: Bloch Professor, UC Berkeley Department of Music (2014); Schulich Distinguished Visiting Professor in Music, McGill University (2015); Visiting Professor jointly in the Schools of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at UC Irvine (2019-20, 2023-24); Professor II at the University of Oslo, Department of Musicology (2014-19); Visiting Professor, Aarhus University, School of Communication and Culture (2017); Marie Curie Senior Research Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (2018-19); and Distinguished Global Scholar, Department of Music, Princeton University (2020-22). I was awarded the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association in 2007, was awarded a Fellowship of the British Academy in 2014, and was awarded an OBE ‘for services to anthropology, musicology and higher education’ in 2016. In 2024 I was awarded the Guido Adler Prize of the International Musicological Society, often regarded as the ‘Nobel Prize in musicology’, for outstanding contributions to the study of music. My past as an experimental musician and improviser is returning soon: in 2025 the record label FMP will release several CDs of the performances of the Feminist Improvising Group (FIG), of which I was a founding member.
