Committee
Thomas Hilder (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Chair (he/him)
I am associate professor in ethnomusicology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim. I am currently researching LGBT choirs and orchestras in London, Rome and Warsaw, exploring the transformation of queer European citizenship and transnational activism in the early 21st century. In the past I have published extensively on music and the politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe and issues of Indigeneity and digital media. My academic, pedagogical and musical practice is deeply informed by feminist, postcolonial and queer perspectives and in particular notions of care, inclusion and political engagement. I’m committed to exploring new modes of being in the academy, challenging its established structures, and contributing to queer music making beyond the academy.
Danielle Sofer, Executive Director (she/her/they/them)
I am a media scholar, music theorist, musicologist, performer, and activist invested in intercultural ethics and sociotechnical inclusivity. A nomad by blood, generations before me moved about East of the Mediterranean, and I’ve never lived anywhere longer than 3 years. I am determined to resist those for whom equality feels like oppression.
Marie Bennett (University of Winchester), Event Liaison Officer (she/her)
I am a PhD candidate at the University of Winchester, UK, where I am critically examining readings of queer performance in a number of mainstream post-Production Code/post-Stonewall Hollywood film musicals released between 1970 and 1983. My major areas of interest and research are film musicals, music in films, queer studies, celebrity studies, popular music of the 1960s-1980s, and the Eurovision Song Contest.
David Bretherton (University of Southampton), Symposium Organiser 2018-2019 (he/him)
I am an Associate Professor in Music at the University of Southampton, where I’ve been a member of staff for several years (I first arrived in 2007 as an Early Career Teaching Fellow). I trained as a music analyst and theorist, and up until fairly recently my work was focused in the somewhat conservative areas of nineteenth-century song, the music of Franz Schubert, and tonal music theory. However, for the last few years I’ve been absorbed in research on ‘queer music theory’. I hosted the Study Group’s 2019 Symposium at the University of Southampton.
George Haggett (Oxford University) (he/him)
I am a PhD student at Oxford University, working on medievalism in contemporary opera. My research pays particular attention to kinships between pre- and postmodern understandings of embodiment and ambiguity, often within contexts of religion, sexuality, and violence. My writing beyond medievalism studies has included queer hagiography in Disney’s Coco, queer transcription in Call Me by Your Name, and conceptions of the trans body in terms of phenomenology and the music of ANOHNI. I have also worked for the university chaplaincy at King’s College, London, and have enduring interests in both queer theology and LGBTQ+ pastoral care and mentorship.
Rachel Cowgill, Chair of RMA LGBTQ+ Study Group (she/her)
I am a professor of music at the University of York and a musicologist. I have longstanding interests in music, identity, space and place, working towards critical-historical engagements through music with geopolitics, cultural memory, ideas of citizenship and collectivity. My queer subjectivity has shaped all aspects of my work, particularly my sense – as a professor and manager – of academia’s responsibility to promote equality, diversity and inclusivity at a deep structural and authentic level.
Flo Toch, Website and Communication Officer (they/them)
Flo is a Leeds Conservatoire graduate with an interest in pop music, queerness in music performance, and sonic markers of queerness. Based in Leeds, their first love is the drum kit. Find out more about them at www.flotochdrums.com
Ryan Persadie (Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto) (he/him)
Ryan Persadie is a performance artist, educator, and PhD Candidate in Women and Gender studies at the University of Toronto (Canada). He holds a MA in Ethnomusicology and Sexual Diversity Studies from the University of Toronto. His aesthetic and scholarly work investigates queer Indo-Caribbean diasporas, performance, post-indenture feminisms, and Afro-Asian intimacies. His current doctoral work specifically explores how specifically Anglophone Caribbean music, dance, vocality, and embodiment offer salient archives for erotic place- and self-making practices for descendants of Indian(-Caribbean) indenture to transgress, disrupt, and re-imagine Indo-Caribbean geographies beyond hetero-/homonormative paradigms of sexual citizenship, home, belonging, desire, pleasure, community, and “Pride.” Outside of academia, Ryan is a community organizer with the Caribbean Equality Project and Queeribbean Toronto, and performs as a drag artist where he goes by the stage name of Tifa Wine. More of this research and writing can be found at: https://utoronto.academia.edu/RyanPersadie.
Anthony R. Green (Universität der Künste Berlin, Graduiertenschule) he/him (preferred), they/them (accepted)
Since 2017, I have been immersed in combining music composition, music performance, performance art, and social justice issues into a practice that also includes writing, teaching, organizing, mentoring, commissioning, occasionally conducting, and more. As a citizen of the world, my projects have taken me across the United States, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the UK, Austria, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Cyprus, South Korea, Canada, and Ghana, with future projects in Kenya, South Africa, and more. I'm a 2021 recipient of a commission from Harvard University's Fromm Music Foundation, I'm an avid attender of artist residencies and conferences, and I'm a co-founder of Castle of our Skins: dedicated to celebrating Black Artistry through music! I also recently married Dr. Itamar Ronen, my occasional piano duo partner and forever husband.
Advisory Board
Shzr Ee Tan (Royal Holloway, University of London), Senior Advisory Officer (she/her)
Richard Witts (Edge Hill University), Senior Advisory Officer
Freya Jarman (University of Liverpool), Senior Advisory Officer (she/her)